A week from tonight, on Thursday, November 19, someone will flip the switch on the Holiday Tree in Library Park while most Monrovia kitchens are still a week away from roasting a turkey. The city doesn't call it a tree lighting alone. Its name is the Thankful & Grateful Holiday Gathering and Tree Lighting, and the name fits the city's calendar. Monrovia doesn't treat Thanksgiving as the gate the holidays have to wait behind. It puts the holiday next to the gratitude.
You can see it across the next few weeks. The tree lighting is on November 19, Thanksgiving falls on November 26, Small Business Saturday comes two days later on November 28, and the Holiday Parade comes down Myrtle Avenue on Thursday, December 3. That's the city's whole big-night holiday program in 15 days, with the Thanksgiving table in the middle. If you host family that week, your guests will land in the middle of it.
The Season's First Gifts Get Made on November 14
The holiday calendar starts before the tree goes up. On Saturday, November 14, the Monrovia Community Garden is hosting a free DIY Garden Gifts workshop from 10 to 11:30 a.m. at 303 W. Colorado Blvd. You'll make garden-inspired holiday gifts, and you don't need to RSVP. The entrance is up the steps off Colorado Boulevard, and the city notes there's plenty of street parking.
The same morning, the Monrovia Historical Museum at 742 E. Lemon Ave. hosts the San Gabriel Mountains Chapter of the California Native Plant Society's California Native Plant Sale, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The city is giving away 200 free native trees there while supplies last. Both events overlap from 10 to 11:30. If you start at the museum when the sale opens, you can still reach the garden while the workshop is running.
The gift-making begins 12 days before Thanksgiving, and that sets the pattern for everything after it.
November 19 Turns Library Park Into the Season's Front Door
The Thankful & Grateful gathering runs from 5 to 8 p.m. at Library Park, 321 S. Myrtle Ave. It's free. The city's announcement lists:
- Live entertainment
- Library story times
- Community booths
- Arts and crafts
- Photo opportunities
- Horse-drawn carriage rides
The tree lighting itself is the evening's highlight. A special guest helps light the Holiday Tree. The event runs three hours, so families with younger kids can do story time and crafts early and still stay for the lighting. For questions, the city lists 626-256-8246.
Library Park sits on Myrtle. So do Small Business Saturday and the parade, which means the whole season runs along the same street, and the tree lighting at its southern end comes first.
Thanksgiving Week Has Two New Ways In
The week between the tree lighting and Small Business Saturday is when out-of-town relatives show up, and two things that opened this year change how you can host them.
The first is a new way to arrive. On Wednesday, November 4, the city cut the ribbon on the Station Square South Gate at 225 W. Duarte Road. It's a new pedestrian entrance to the Metro A Line and part of the Trestle development, and Patch reported the 9 a.m. ceremony that marked it finished. Relatives coming in by light rail for the holidays now have another way to get from the platform into town.
The second is a new place to stay. The Arthur Blair Historic Inn on South Ivy Avenue opened this summer after almost three years of restoration. It has 11 suites across two fully restored 1887 Victorians and one new building, and both Victorians are locally landmarked and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Monrovia Historic Preservation Group calls it the first inn of its kind in Monrovia. The Los Angeles Times reported in August that the main house had belonged to Steve Baker, the city's longtime historian, and that preservationists Joshua Cain and André Reyes restored it to carry out his idea of turning it into a bed-and-breakfast.
The middle Victorian holds Viola's, a restaurant serving French-inspired food from a seasonal menu, with lunch, dinner, weekend brunch and wine in the garden. In August, the preservation group reported dinner service Thursday through Saturday, the same Thursday nights as the tree lighting and the parade. Check the reservation page before you plan a dinner around either event.
If the house is full and someone needs something quiet to do on the Friday after Thanksgiving, the Monrovia Historical Society and Community Media of the Foothills released Monrovia's Route 66 on YouTube this fall. The 50-minute film uses historical photographs and motion-picture footage to trace the highway's arrival in 1926 and the roadside businesses that grew up around it. It revisits the Aztec Hotel, the McDonald brothers' first food stands and the Monrovia Flying Field. It premiered in October at the Community Center, during the highway's centennial year.
November 28 Moves the Season North to Lemon
Two days after Thanksgiving, the Monrovia Chamber of Commerce brings the season to Old Town for Small Business Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Myrtle and Lemon avenues. The event is free, and the Chamber's booth hands out passports and tote bags while supplies last. If you want a tote, go early.
The tree has been lit for nine days by the time Small Business Saturday arrives, and the Old Town shops get their holiday Saturday under a holiday already underway.
The city's Old Town holiday events page also lists holiday carolers on Saturdays and holiday carriage rides on Sundays in Old Town. Check that page for this year's weekends before you build a Sunday around a ride.
December 3 Closes Myrtle End to End
The Monrovia Holiday Parade is Thursday, December 3, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. The city's 2026 calendar has it heading north on Myrtle Avenue from Chestnut Avenue to Palm Avenue, sponsored by the Monrovia Old Town Advisory Board.
The parade lasts two and a half hours, but the closures last five. The city's parade page lists full street closures from 5 to 10 p.m. on:
- Myrtle Avenue from Huntington Drive to Foothill Boulevard
- Maple Avenue between Ivy and Primrose
- Chestnut Avenue between Ivy and Primrose
- Palm Avenue between Ivy and Primrose
The page also lists mid-block streets that will be closed to through traffic. If you usually use Myrtle to get across town on a Thursday evening, plan another route that night. Closures start at 5 p.m., so the late-afternoon school pickup and commute will run into them too. Groups or businesses that want to take part can find the city contact on the same page.
The Arthur Blair Historic Inn's street, South Ivy Avenue, is the western boundary for the cross-street closures on Maple, Chestnut and Palm, so guests staying there will have the parade a short walk away.
The Friday Rhythm Picks Up Around the Big Nights
The tree lighting and the parade are both on Thursdays, and the Monrovia Street Fair & Market keeps its usual Friday evening slot on Myrtle Avenue, from 5 to 9 p.m. this time of year. The city's late-October update still listed the market as a weekly Friday event at 5 p.m. Before you make plans for the Friday after Thanksgiving or the Friday after the parade, check the market's site for holiday-week hours.
Putting it all together, here's the order of the season:
- Saturday, Nov. 14: Native plant sale at the Historical Museum, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and the garden gifts workshop on Colorado Boulevard, 10 to 11:30 a.m.
- Thursday, Nov. 19: Thankful & Grateful Holiday Gathering and Tree Lighting, Library Park, 5 to 8 p.m.
- Thursday, Nov. 26: Thanksgiving
- Saturday, Nov. 28: Small Business Saturday at Myrtle and Lemon, 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
- Thursday, Dec. 3: Holiday Parade on Myrtle, 7 to 9:30 p.m., with closures from 5 to 10 p.m.
Every city-run holiday night on that list falls in the 15 days from November 19 to December 3. By the second week of December, the tree in Library Park has been lit for nearly a month.
If you're thinking about listing in the new year, the quieter weeks after the parade are a good time to find out where your home stands. The Berns Team can put a plan in place before spring. Start your 10 Day Blitz and request a free home valuation.
