It is one of the most anticipated nights of the year in Fort Wayne and it just keeps growing bigger and grander.

It’s Night of Lights, the night when many downtown attractions unveil their holiday events.

It’s also the night when northeast Indiana residents are given an opportunity to revisit the cheerful ghosts of Christmases past.

It happens this year on Nov. 22 – Thanksgiving Eve, as always.

Night of Lights consists, primarily and appropriately, of many ceremonial lightings around the downtown area: a turret, a nativity scene, a bread factory, a Santa sign and a wreath.

The lightings are scheduled in such a way that one can stroll from one to the next without missing any.

New this year is an “illumination” at 6:40 p.m. of the Ash Skyline Plaza, according to Rick Zolman at the Downtown Improvement District.

“We’re excited about that,” he said. “It’s just a natural fit with Ash and the Skyline building and the lights that they have. So to kind of make that a part of our evening is really cool. We want to celebrate having them downtown.”

The 155-foot-long sign featuring Santa and his reindeer debuted on the side of the Wolf & Dessauer department store in 1940, went dark during World War II, was welcomed back in 1945 and endured as a local holiday tradition until 1958.

It was rediscovered in a warehouse by a GTE phone installer in 1979 and was laboriously restored by volunteers.

The sign made it’s triumphant late 20th century debut on the side of what was then known as the Fort Wayne National Bank building in 1980.

National City Bank did an extension renovation of the sign in 1999.

It now appears every year on the side of what is now called the PNC Bank building.

Earlier this year, the City of Huntington announced that it had commissioned Huntington Sheet Metal to create a smaller version of Fort Wayne’s Santa sign for its holiday celebrations.

The giant wreath that is lit every year on the side of the I&M Power Center is another former Wolf & Dessauer decoration that was rescued and refurbished.

Zolman said he believes the wreath predates the Santa sign.

The official start of every Night of Lights happens at the History Center, where the turret has been festively lit for 7 years.

The evening always marks the launch of the History Center’s venerable, two-week-long holiday event, the Festival of Gingerbread.

A new Night of Lights feature this year, is hot beverages in the Barr Street Market, which the History Center owns.

The History Center’s executive director Todd Pelfrey said he isn’t sure what the hot beverages will be exactly.

He just doesn’t want anyone thinking they’re toddys or spiked ciders.

“I am thinking more along the lines of hot chocolate and coffee,” he said.

Inside the History Center, he said, there will be special holiday displays devoted to antique toys and the history of Wolf & Dessauer.

There will also be the annual exhibition of Philemon (Phil) Steigerwald’s Santa Claus costume.

Steigerwald, who died in 2004 at the age of 76, was Fort Wayne’s official Santa Claus for more than 40 years, working out of a Sears on Rudisill Boulevard initially, before graduating to Wolf & Dessauer.

His Santa Claus portrayal came to an ignominious end in 1985, according to a 2004 Journal Gazette obituary, when the city decided it no longer wanted to pay Steigerwald his customary fee.

When he wasn’t playing Santa Claus, Steigerwald was a realtor.

“Innumerable residents remember sitting on Phil’s lap,” Pelfrey said. “It’s always really special to see that generation of resident look at the suit.”

The next two stops on the lighting procession are a nativity scene on the Ross Building and Aunt Millie’s bread factory on Pearl Street.

Aunt Millie’s first got involved in the Night of Lights in 2005 according to Melissa Dunning, senior director of marketing for the bakery.

Initially, they decorated the factory with a storybook house façade, but many of the panels blew off in a windstorm one year, so they abandoned that approach in favor of a lighting display created by Winterland of Marion, Indiana.

Winterland’s lighting display is a “green decoration,” said Dunning.

“It uses less than 15 amps of power,” she said. “Two hair dryers use more power than the entire display.”

The lighted area of the building is about 41 feet high by 226 feet long, Dunning said.

There will be a tent with free hot cider and slices of cranberry swirl bread, she said. The tent opens at 5 p.m.

There’s a possibility that this will be the last year of the bread company’s involvement in Night of Lights.

Aunt Millie’s Bakeries announced last week that it would phase out production at the Pearl Street factory by April of 2018.

Dunning said she didn’t have any information about future plans for the building.

“There are a lot of rumors floating around,” she said. “What I can say is that we’re a Fort Wayne company and we’re staying in Fort Wayne.”

The community center’s lights, the Santa sign, the Ash Brokerage display and the wreath are the next stops in chronological order.

The Embassy Theatre always opens its Festival of Trees during Night of Lights and the Foellinger-Freimann Botanical Conservatory kicks off its annual holiday showcase exhibit that same evening.

The theme of the showcase this year, according to the conservatory’s manager, Chad Shaw, is Snow Days.

“It’s a look in on getting a day off of school,” he said. “We’ve got a variety of snow people throughout the facility who will be doing the typical day-off-of-school things in the wintertime: skiing, sledding and ice-skating.”

Poinsettias will be on display throughout the conservatory as well, Shaw said.

The conservatory recently completed a patio renovation project and there will be fire pits out there for the first time during Night of Lights this year, he said. S’more kits will be available so interested visitors can grill themselves up a treat.

Light displays will be synced up with music on the conservatory’s terrace again this year, Shaw said.

The Grand Wayne Center will be hosting its annual Holiday Open House throughout the evening, Zolman said, with entertainment, decorations and refreshments.

The Night of Lights ends with the ringing of the downtown church bells at 7:30 p.m. and fireworks at Parkview Field at 7:45 p.m., he said.

Three days later, the Downtown Improvement District will be celebrating Shop Small Saturday (aka Small Business Saturday) by offering Holly Trolley Shopping downtown.

Small Business Saturday is sort of an antidote to the menacingly named Black Friday. It’s an opportunity to highlight – and help people discover – small, local businesses.

Holly Trolley Shopping consists of six free, heated trolleys traveling three shopping and dining routes in and around downtown.

“(One route) is called the green line, one is called the red line and one is called the silver line,” Zolman said. “The red line is basically focused on downtown. The silver line is focused on the Broadway and Main Street areas. And the green line is focused on the Wells corridor.”

Two hundred riders will receive a free gift tote, he said.

Night of Lights Lighting Schedule:

5:30 pm – History Center Turret Lighting (Barr Street)
5:45 pm – Christ Child Festival Nativity Lighting (Ross Building on Main Street)
5:50 pm – Aunt Millie’s Northern Lights (Pearl Street)
5:55 pm – Community Center Santa’s Workshop Display (Main Street)
6:20 pm – Santa and His Reindeer at PNC Bank (Main and Calhoun Streets)
6:40 pm – Ash Brokerage Holiday Illumination (Harrison and Berry Streets)
7:00 pm – Wells Fargo Holiday Display and Indiana Michigan Power Merry Christmas Wreath (I&M Power Center Plaza at Calhoun and Wayne Streets)
7:15 pm – Botanical Conservatory & Embassy Theatre Displays (Jefferson Boulevard) 7:30 pm – Ringing of the Bells (Downtown Churches & ACPL)
7:45 pm – Parkview Field Holiday Fireworks (Jefferson Boulevard)

The first Festival Of Trees happened either in 1984 or 1985 depending on what source one consults.

It has since become the Embassy Theatre’s largest and most beloved annual fundraiser.

In 1985, the first major renovation of the dilapidated theater was still a decade away, so the Festival of Trees was vitally important.

If those early festivals hadn’t been successes, there may never have been any later festivals.

The 2017 edition of the Festival Of Trees starts November 22 and runs through November 29.

It is particularly appropriate now to look at the recent and distant past of the venue because the Embassy will be celebrating its 90th anniversary next year and it is using this year’s Festival of Trees as a launch party of sorts.

“We’re using Festival of Trees to announce all of our programming for that celebration,” said the Embassy’s marketing director, John Hughey.

I asked him to give me a sneak preview of the big reveal but he wouldn’t budge.

“We’re using the Festival of Trees as a bookend,” Hughey said. “We’ll start the celebration with this Festival of Trees and we’ll wrap it up at next year’s Festival of Trees.”

The 2017 Festival of Trees will showcase almost 60 trees, sponsored by local businesses and decorated by professional decorators.

As always, the trees will line the theater lobby, the theater mezzanine and the Indiana Hotel lobby.

The festival’s trees can be scrupulously traditional. And they can be fairly untraditional.

In the past, the Fort Wayne TinCaps offered a baseball-themed tree and a local bank once covered a tree with dollar bills.

There has been a TV-themed tree and a tree with lights that attendees could power by riding a bike connected to a generator.

In 2009, the Embassy had a tree that could be played like a pipe organ.

A new wrinkle this year is a two-tree display devoted to Australia, Hughey said.

The Fort Wayne International Airport is sponsoring a “Christmas in New York” tree, thematically linked to the direct flights to Newark that the airport started offering in 2016.

There will also be a “Star Wars” tree timed to capitalize on the release of “The Last Jedi,” Hughey said.

For most attendees, the Festival of Trees is a beloved holiday tradition. But for some, it’s also a chance to crib holiday decorating ideas from the pros.

That’s OK. There’s no law against it.

And there are also no laws governing the tree trimming process, Hughey said. The sponsor/decorator teams are given no rules to go by.

“We want the creativity to rule,” he said.

The only time the Embassy ever rejected a team’s concept was when they wanted to make a wreath in lieu of decorating a tree.

The venue has the setup of Festival of Trees down to a science, Hughey said.

“Each decorator has an arrival time and a departure time,” he said. “That way each decorator can focus on his or her space.”

The overall holiday preparation process at the Embassy begins in mid-September, Hughey said.

The items that will occupy the animated windows are inspected and tested.

Animated department store window displays have been a Christmas tradition in the United States since the late 1800s when Marshall Fields in Chicago and Macy’s in New York established the custom.

Throughout much of the 20th century, the place in downtown Fort Wayne to see animated Christmas windows was the Wolf & Dessauer department store.

Allen Bixby was the chief window decorator for the store for three decades, according to Fort Wayne historians Jim and Kathie Barron, and he traveled to bigger cities to get ideas.

Many thought Bixby’s creations were superior to any and all others, the Barrons have said.

Scenes featuring animated store window displays are a staple of such Christmas films as “Miracle on 34th Street,” “A Christmas Story” and a number of screen adaptations of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

So it was a shame when the downtown L.S. Ayres department store (which had taken over the Wolf & Dessauer space in 1969) closed in the late 1970s.

Thankfully, the Embassy eventually resurrected the tradition.

In 2005, the Embassy recruited Walter Tharp Jr., one of Wolf & Dessauer’s latter-day window designers, to decorate the venue’s windows.

These days, that job is done by Stan Sheets, Hughey said.

“He rotates the collection each year, creating new vignettes,” he said.

Speaking of holiday films, the Embassy has decided to host a screening of one as part of this year’s festivities.

Hughey said this has been a big movie year for the Embassy.

In late October, the theater hosted a screening of “E.T. The Extra Terrestrial” with live accompaniment from the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

At 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, the theater will offer a showing of the 1954 Michael Curtiz film “White Christmas,” starring Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Danny Kaye.

The movie was a spin-off, of sorts, of the 1942 film, “Holiday Inn,” which also starred Crosby and featured Irving Berlin’s music.

Berlin’s song, “White Christmas,” was first introduced in “Holiday Inn” and proved to be a monster hit. It won the Oscar that year for Best Original Song.

The massive popularity of the song spurred the creation of a second, holiday-themed movie featuring different characters.

The score for the movie “White Christmas” was the last Berlin composed for the silver screen.

Admission to the film is free with a Festival of Trees admission.

A stage musical based on “White Christmas” debuted on Broadway in 2008 and is currently being offered at the Fort Wayne Civic Theatre through November 19.

Live entertainment provided by local arts groups (and by the Embassy’s Grand Page Organ) will happen more or less continuously throughout this year’s Festival of Trees on the Embassy stage, Hughey said.

A venerable associated event, Breakfast with Santa, will also return.

Children can visit with Mr. and Mrs. Claus throughout the festival as well.

Some of the hot toys that the Clauses can expect to hear requests for this year include (according to the Today Show, the Independent newspaper and Toys-R-Us): a build-your-own R2D2, finger monkeys, a Luvabella Doll, a Movi robot, a Sqweeks robot, Hatchimals, Nintendo Switch and (believe it or not) Teddy Ruxpin.

Yes, Ruxpin has risen from the retail dead.

The Festival of Trees is different from other Fort Wayne festivals that happen around this time of year and that can create confusion.

Whereas holiday events at the History Center and the Foellinger Freimann Botanical Conservatory (for example) can last several weeks, the Festival of Trees is only 8 days long.

The reason for this is the nature of what Embassy does, Hughey said.

“As a concert venue,” he said, “we really can only do it one week. We do usually get at least one call in December and people are disappointed.”

Despite only being a week long, the Festival of Trees attracted 22,000 visitors last year, Hughey said.

“We do try to grow that number every year,” he said.

The Embassy was saved in the late 20th century by the work of dedicated volunteers, Hughey said, and events like the Festival of Trees still couldn’t happen without the venue’s volunteers.

“It’s really a community endeavor,” he said. “We could not do this without the volunteers. We could not do this without the sponsors. Really, that community love of the Embassy — that’s how it started 33 years ago. And it still continues.

“And we see no indication that the love affair is ending.” Hughey said.

The live entertainment schedule for the Festival of Trees:

Friday, Nov. 24

12 p.m. – Ellie Paige Dance Academy
1 p.m. – IPFW Saxophone Quartet
2 p.m. – DancinKids Dance Studio
3 p.m. – Fred Astaire Dance Studio
4 p.m. – K. Monique’s Studio of Dance
5 p.m. – New Millennium Jazz Orchestra
6 p.m. – Dance Ltd.
7 p.m. – IPFW Jazz Ensemble

Saturday, Nov. 25

12 p.m. – Dance NY Style Studio of Dance
1 p.m. – The Dance Dolls
2 p.m. – Deer Ridge Vocal Voyagers
3 p.m. – Amaneceres de Mexico Dance
4 p.m. – Tiffany & Co. Studio of Dance
5 p.m. – Julie’s School of Dance
6 p.m. – Smooth Edge 2
7 p.m. – SheeKriStyle Dance Academy

Sunday, Nov. 26

12 p.m. – Starz Dance Academy / Gymnastics in Motion
1 p.m. – Starz Dance Academy / Gymnastics in Motion
2 p.m. – Center Stage Academy of Dance
3 p.m. – North Side High School Choir
4 p.m. – Northeast School of Dance
5 p.m. – Fort Wayne Dance Collective
6 p.m. – Janice Dyson Dance Studio
7 p.m. – Pulse Dance and Performance Center

Fort Wayne seems to be a good launching pad for musicians of an Americana and progressive bluegrass bent.

The Avett Brothers, who recently were the focal point of a documentary by Judd Apatow, performed on a makeshift stage at a convergence of downtown streets in Fort Wayne in 2006.

The Band Perry performed at a now-defunct country bar here in 2010 and the Wailin’ Jennys, who were a favorite of Garrison Keillor when he hosted “A Prairie Home Companion,” performed twice in Fort Wayne in 2006: at a fabled (and long shuttered) coffeehouse and at C2G Music Hall.

Now it’s the Accidentals turn to make the most of a Summit City boost.

They will perform at C2G on November 5.

When the Accidentals first appeared here in early 2016, only a few local and non-local people knew who they were.

A lot has changed in the last twenty or so months.

The Accidentals came about because two self-described orchestra geeks, Savannah Buist and Katie Larson, were thrown together by happenstance. The Traverse City, Michigan teens volunteered for a high school assignment and a forced collaboration soon became an enthusiastic one.

They decided to call themselves The Accidentals (a double entendre referencing a musical note and serendipity) and later added drummer Michael Dause.

The Accidentals were “discovered” by rocker Marshall Crenshaw and producer Stewart Lerman in 2015. The gentlemen signed the band to a production deal.

But the band declined to renew that contract in 2016.

“It didn’t really work out,” Larson said. “We decided to move in a direction that was mutually agreed upon.”

The Accidentals subsequently self-produced the 2016 EP Parking Lot and offered it as a free download. In early 2017, the band announced that they had signed with Sony Masterworks.

Their major label debut, Odyssey, was released in August. It features guest appearances by The Decemberists, Keller Williams and Carbon Leaf, among many illustrious others.

It is not uncommon to hear horror stories of music ruined by major label imperiousness, but Larson said that was not The Accidentals’ experience with Sony Masterworks.

“We were super lucky,” she said. “Before we signed the deal, we literally sat down with the head of the label at the time and he told us he believed in our creativity and our vision and the songs.

“We told him we wanted to capture the energy of our live shows,” Larson said, “and broke any rules of any genres. I feel like we had a lot of creative control and the end product is something that we’re really proud of.”

The band that Fort Wayne fans saw in 2016 is different from the one they will see in 2017.

“We’ve been on the road for three years now, full-time,” Buist said. “That’s definitely changed our music a lot. When you play it every night, it gets a lot tighter than it used to be. When you play it hundreds and hundreds of times, it really solidifies the arrangements. It also strengthens the bond between the three of us.”

Opening for, and collaborating with, such artists as Crenshaw and Williams has increased the band’s confidence, sophistication and professionalism as well, Buist said.

Williams, especially, has taken the band under his dexterous wing, she said.

“We played on his album and we asked him to play on ours,” Buist said. “We said, ‘What do you charge?” and he said, “Exactly what you charged me.’ We didn’t charge him at all.”

Buist said Williams recently asked them to be his back-up band for a series of shows in Colorado.

The whole notion of being anyone’s backup band is still a relatively new one for the Accidentals, Buist said.

A few years back, the band was opening for cellist Ben Sollee at City Winery in Chicago. Sollee’s backing musicians got stuck in a snowstorm in Kentucky and he asked the Accidentals to provide musical support in their stead.

“At first, we were absolutely terrified,” she said.

“At that point,” Dause said, “I had only been in the band a couple of months. Suddenly it was like, “What? Back up Ben Sollee? What is what is even going on right now?”

Buist said they recently had to improvise a set with a horn-filled Toronto funk band called Turbo Street Funk.

The collaboration was the brainchild of a Canadian event coordinator who has traditionally filled the final night of a music festival with such stunt alliances.

“We actually successfully improvised a set together but only because, between songs, we would shout the key signatures across the stage to each other,” Buist said.

Heavy touring can be a strain on band cohesion, but Buist said the members of The Accidentals remain close.

“It’s actually pretty easy,” she said. “In a lot of ways, we’re really similar. We’re introverted, so we know how to respect each other’s space. We all kind of want to do the same things on our days off.”

“Today we’re probably all going to go to a science museum and then eat a lot of food together,” Larson said. “It helps that we’re all so much alike.”

“We bicker like siblings sometimes,” Buist said. “But our love for each other is really strong.”

Creative collusions with new musicians and unfamiliar genres have made the band bolder and more ambitious artistically, Larson said.

“I feel more inspired to create,” she said. “We have aspirations to tour with horn players and bring out more string players.”

Larson said the band will be doing a couple of album release shows in Michigan soon and they plan to add lighting and video components to their live mix.

“The more you see and experience on the road,” she said, “the more ideas you get. The same happens in our songwriting.”

Increased experience hasn’t entirely eliminated stage fright, however.

“I still have stage fright,” Larson said. “It is more situational than it used to be. But all of us suffer from our own anxieties and social worries. I find myself all the time overanalyzing the audience reaction, overanalyzing our performance. We’re all perfectionists.

“I’ll psych myself out,” she said. “Then there are the times when I know we had a great show and even I can’t talk myself out of it. I love the crowd at C2G. They’ve very supportive, very engaged, very encouraging. You can tell that everyone in the room is sharing a positive experience. I am really looking forward to coming back.”

Even though the band’s national profile has been raised considerably in recent months, they are still very much a part of the Traverse City music scene, Larson said.

“We still live there,” Buist said. “We are still very much tied in to our Michigan home life.”

“Coming home” after a tour always means returning to Traverse City, she said.

“When we come home for our (album) release shows, I already know that at least six people are going to make us homemade cookies,” Larson said. “So I am really looking forward to that.”