In December 2009, Harley Hahn was driving around Santa Barbara looking at Christmas lights with a friend.
The author and computer science professional decided to take notes and turned it into a holiday light tour, writing out specific instructions on where to turn, when to stop and walk around.
Hahn posted the tour online for other Santa Barbara residents and visitors to look at and take the tour for themselves.
The next year he did the same thing, and he still puts together the tour every year, posting a new one the first Monday of December.
This year’s tour is live on his website and has five parts, which include a musical house and a chance to see Santa on the weekends.
The tour takes you through downtown Santa Barbara to the Westside, over Bel Air Knolls to the west of Las Positas Road, and finishes in the neighborhood of Hitchcock Way.
Each year, Hahn retraces the previous year’s tour — twice — and makes a note of what areas still have lights and which areas don’t.
“I start out with last year’s tour, I have somebody with me and I print it out for them and they can read it to me,” Hahn said. “I’ll go very slowly and I’ll follow it.
“But I notice when things change, sometimes things disappear, and sometimes things appear that weren’t there before.”
When things disappear, Hahn will try to find new decorations in the area, or in a nearby neighborhood. Sometimes people will send him suggestions on things to add to the tour.
Hahn told Noozhawk that it takes about a day — or a night — to update the tour. He has to pay attention to all the changes, even the small ones, to make sure there aren’t large gaps and that the route makes sense.
“Making it work doesn’t mean listing it,” Hahn said. “It has to be a route that you can follow sequentially from one place to another and it has to make sense to drive it.
“You can’t have one way streets, it has to be drivable, it has to be interesting, it has to be doable and you can’t have any dangerous turns.”
Hahn doesn’t just give directions on where to go, he annotates them so they’re clear to follow in the dark or if a street sign is hidden.
He also lets people know when it’s worth it to stop at a spot for a while.
“It’s not just the tour route,” Hahn said. “It’s annotated with safety information and interesting things to see, and hits on certain things and how to do it.”
So why has Hahn been doing this every year for the past 14 years? He said it’s not about the lights but the holiday spirit — and the people who take the time to put up all the Christmas lights and decorations.
“It’s about people who volunteer to put in effort and spend money, and take a lot of time to do things to make people happy that they may never even meet,” Hahn said.
“That’s really what Christmas is about.”
When Hahn looks at the Christmas lights himself, he thinks about the work that went into putting them up, the time spent on arranging them, putting them up and taking them down each year, and trying not to get the wiring mixed up.
“A lot of these people don’t necessarily have a lot of money,” he said, “but they’ll spend it to make other people feel good and be happy during this season.”
Hahn’s favorite stop on this year’s tour is the “Musical House” on Portesuello Avenue at the corner of Crestline Drive.
He said another favorite aspect is watching people interact with Santa Claus at the end of the tour. From 5 to 7 p.m. each Saturday and Sunday before Christmas, Santa Claus can be found at the end of the tour wishing spectators a Merry Christmas.
Hahn shared that just a few weeks ago he was taking a friend on the tour when he met two Santa Barbara City College students who had come across Hahn’s website and followed the tour to go meet Santa.
“They were so happy to see Santa Claus and they wanted to have pictures taken with him,” Hahn said. “That kind of happiness is beyond money.
“And most of the year it’s beyond people, because it’s only during this holiday season that people offer those feelings to other people for free to people they don’t even know.”
