Recap: D23 Gold Members Treated To Disney Parks Holiday Traditions (More Present Than Past) in Latest Gold Theater Live Stream
Tonight, D23 Gold Members were invited to gather around their device or screen with a cup of hot cocoa or tea and enjoy this month’s installment of the D23 Gold Theater, catching a live stream that celebrates the holidays at the Disney Parks around the globe.
The special live stream, “Holiday Traditions in the Disney Parks: A Global Celebration,” was hosted by Walt Disney Archives president Becky Cline and Graham Allan - two thirds of the authors of Holiday Magic at the Disney Parks: Celebrations From Around The World from Fall to Winter. Along with Charlie Price, they quite literally wrote the book on chronicling all the holiday celebrations. Appropriate too, since our hosts for the evening first met performing in the Candlelight Processional - one of the more iconic holiday traditions at the Disney Parks.
But where and how did it all start? Fortunately, Becky Cline has that answer for us and of course it dates back to Disneyland in 1955. The original Disney Park celebrated the holiday with a Christmas-themed circus. Makes sense, right? The event started on Thanksgiving in 1955, and with a parade that featured Walt Disney and Fess Parker as the grand marshals. Mickey Mouse Club’s Jimmy Dodd was the ringmaster of the circus - which itself lasted over two hours.
The lesson was learned - people come to Disneyland to see Disneyland, not to see a Christmas Circus for two hours. So, that was the last year that the circus was featured in the park.
Buy 1960, we got the first iteration of the parade spectacles that we see nowadays as Babes in Toyland was heading to theaters and the park introduced the Parade of Toys, also marking the debut of the signature Toy Soldiers into the holiday parade festivities. Even better for those D23 Gold Members (and apologies to those of you reading this recap as this stream will only be shown twice and is not playable on demand), as Becky is explaining all of this, were are treated to archival and rarely seen footage and pictures.
However, one thing at Disneyland in 1955 spawned more elaborate things to come - the Christmas at Disneyland Festival. That special event included guest choirs, performing at the bandstand where Fantasy Faire sits today. On November 25th, 1955, a massed choir performance was held on the train station steps in Town Square on Main Street U.S.A. The event also featured the Disneyland Band, Dickens Carolers, and the day’s visiting choral groups. The event grew each following year, and became the iconic holiday tradition for Disneyland - the Candlelight Processional in 1958.
The stream took a pause on Candlelight Processional talk for just a bit, but as it is the clear favorite of Becky and Graham, we know we’re going to get more about it later in the special stream.
From there, we start talking about some decorations - specifically new wardrobe on some familiar Country Bear Friends, as we learn about their holiday special that debuted in 1984. This mostly served as a jumping off point to talk about holiday layovers on classic attractions, since that was the first. While they glaze over Haunted Mansion Holiday, considering that was last month’s live stream event in the D23 Gold Theater, we do take a deep dive into arguably the most beautiful holiday layover dating back to 1997 - the debut of “it’s a small world” Holiday.
We are then joined by Steven Davison, who was the mastermind of the now-classic holiday retheme of the classic attraction. While discussing the origins of the attraction, he explained that there was a campaign being launched to “Come Home for the Holidays” with Disneyland serving as “Home” in this instance. While there was a long list of ideas, there was one smaller idea at the bottom of the list that stuck out: a holiday retheme of the iconic attraction. Davison and his team worked on how to make this happen, even approaching the Sherman Brothers (who wrote the classic song for the attraction) who explained that a Christmas-retheme of the attraction was something that they themselves once pitched to Walt Disney himself.
Davison also explained that the first year of the layover was quite the challenge, especially since they didn’t have enough electrical power to fire up the attraction with all the lights. While the interior is fully adorned as well, the exterior alone has 80,000 Christmas lights installed and each time they tried to turn everything on, breakers would blow. That first year, they had to bring generators in just to keep the power flowing. While that seemed to be a problem, other solutions were found. In the words of Davison, “If we’re going to do it, let’s over do it.”
We then bounce over to Bruce Healey, who was responsible for all the music of the holiday layover to “it’s a small world.” His primary concern was how to pull this off without making it a challenge to do every single year. He sat with the original audio designer for the attraction, getting documents about the philosophy of how each track works together in the attraction. As he dove into the tracks, he discovered most of them were about a minute long. As he points out - if there’s one complaint about “it’s a small world” its how repetitive it is. So, he expanded these tracks to two minutes, playing both the classic theme as well as Jingle Bells. In the finale, the two songs would be Jingle Bells and Deck The Halls.
Healey also composed new arrangements for the various cultural styles depicted in the attraction. Holiday layovers to “it’s a small world” also expanded to Tokyo Disneyland from 2003 - 2014, and at Disneyland Paris.
From this classic layover, we jump to the special parties at Walt Disney World, which are questionable advertisements in disguise as we might have talked about their origin year, but everything featured is what is currently offered at both Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom and Disney Jollywood Nights at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
We also catch glimpses of some of the entertainment offerings at Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, as well as shows like Mickey’s Christmas Big Band at Disneyland Paris. This leads up to a brief mention of the current parade at Disneyland Paris for the festivities - Mickey’s Dazzling Christmas Parade.
We then jump to Dave Caranci, who is responsible for leading the decorative efforts around Disneyland Park. His big focus was on the storytelling of the decor, and how it fits into each land. For example, would the decorations tell the story of the land as a whole, or be indicative of the characters in those lands and how they celebrate the holidays. He cites the examples of Main Street U.S.A. at Disneyland and Buena Vista Street at Disney California Adventure and how those are townships which would be a community that decorates together. He then bounces over to Toontown and Frontierland as an example, showcasing that different decor is featured throughout as though the characters who reside there do all the decorating themselves.
The idea of decorating continues as we are joined by Phil Rahn, responsible for the teams who install all of these decorations. He says the effort starts as soon as the last pieces of say, 2024, are put away. That’s when they start getting everything ready for 2025. Contrary to popular belief, as Rahn explains, the effort does not all happen in a single night. He says that in mid-October they’ll start sneaking things in and installing where they can, and come November 1st, everything kicks on, lights up, and becomes active.
While we’re back at Disneyland, we once again rejoin Steve Davison to talk about the signature entertainment at the park, with this year marking the 30th anniversary of A Christmas Fantasy Parade. Davison is pleasantly surprised that the parade is still there after all this time, but notes that while it remains largely the same there are subtle differences added each and every year. He then points out he’s wearing a special jacket - marking the opening debut of Believe…In Holiday Magic.
We learn about the now classic nighttime spectacular that takes place in the wintery skies above Disneyland during this festive time of year, and how it started because there was a demand for a holiday version of the popular fireworks show that debuted a summer earlier, Believe…There’s Magic in the Stars, which ironically just lasted about four years at the park, while its holiday counterpart is now in its 25th year. Davison shares the the holiday production was developed by the same team, the same crew, and all those involved with Believe…There’s Magic in the Stars, but with a brand new soundtrack and color theories that were explored with a holiday eye. The idea: to make guests remember what the holidays are all about. Davison then shared another fun anecdote about the show's signature finale. Early on, they had seen testing of a new snow-like product over at the Rivers of America, and while initially thinking it would be hokey, Davison was pleasantly surprised with how it looked, so they made it the finale of the show. That was, of course, before you could get this kind of machine at your local party supply store.
What he wasn’t ready for, was how the amount of heat generated by a Main Street’s worth of people wouldn’t actually allow the snow to fall to the ground, instead kind of hovering above the crowd until the additional lighting kicked on and helped balance out the temperature. So now, the snow kicks on earlier, that way when the lights hit, the snow can fall peacefully and more naturally.
After that, we spend a lengthy chunk of the program exploring the history of the Candlelight Processional at the park, expanding on what we’ve already mentioned. While we’ve already discussed the history of the program, as well as its Walt Disney World counterpart which ran at the Magic Kingdom from 1971-1993 and now at EPCOT from 1994 to the present day, we got to hear from some of those involved with the Disneyland production. This was of course after we saw several minutes of a rehearsal of this year’s Candlelight Processional at Disneyland in the wee hours of the morning. Itself a special treat for D23 Gold Members who tuned into the live stream.
Nancy Sulahian, the musical director for Candlelight Processional at Disneyland shared some of her favorite memories and thoughts on the tradition, saying it has all three things you could possibly want: Disneyland, Christmas, and Music. Bruce Healey looked fondly at his time as percussionist in the holiday show in the late 70s, leading into additional cast members sharing their fond memories of participating in the production.
Disney Legend Jodi Benson crashes the stream from Disney’s Art of Animation Resort at Walt Disney World in front of that resort’s giant Ariel statue (in case you forgot that she is the voice of Ariel in the animated classic, The Little Mermaid) to share her fond memories over many years of being a celebrity narrator at EPCOT. She even told a recent story where 22 of her family members were watching the spectacle from the crowd.
Graham, one of our hosts, reminds us why he likes the Candlelight Processional so much: because it's a grand spectacle while simultaneously being an intimate and spiritual experience.
Afterward, a lot of these magic makers shared their favorite holiday traditions to help close out the live stream. Bruce Healey revealed that he loves the lighting of the Christmas Tree in Town Square, while Becky mentions Candlelight Processional as her real favorite, after joking about the treats and gingerbread houses peppered throughout the resort hotels of Walt Disney World. Graham had the ever-charming answer of just sitting in Town Square with a cup of tea and some cookies and just drinking in the atmosphere - but Steve had this author’s favorite response: “When I convinced them to put the Tamales on Main Street.” Elaborating that he said that there is a group that will absolutely love this and shared how one cart has grown to multiple different Tamale offerings throughout.
Because D23 Members are so well versed in the Disney lore, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention certain things that were blatantly skipped over for the holiday traditions at the Disney Parks. Namely, the Cinderella Castle Dreamlights (those stunningly beautiful white lights that made the Walt Disney World landmark look like shimmering ice) and of course, the Osbourne Family Spectacle of Lights (dancing or otherwise) at the Disney-MGM Studios/Disney’s Hollywood Studios. On a personal note, we talked about all these firsts and I can’t believe they didn’t mention the first holiday spectacle at Disney’s California Adventure - Luminaria. Mostly because that happens to be my favorite footnote (it only ran that one year) in the lengthy Disney Parks Holiday History. Other favorites, like the Lights of Winter at EPCOT and Disneyland Paris were mentioned but not expanded upon.
Overall the stream was a great treat, and would have shined brighter had it not followed the heavily produced Haunted Mansion Holiday stream last month, or if they dove deeper into traditions Past not just present and currently marketable. Especially since that’s what these very hosts do in their book, which you can find out more about in our interview.
This livestream event will take place once again with an encore presentation Saturday, December 20, 2025, at 11 a.m. PT / 2 p.m. ET. The stream will not be available after that or on an on-demand basis.