Holiday spirit … Carmel style

Sunset, Dec, 1995 by Peter Fish

December dusk: the sky fading to indigo, Monterey cypress looming shaggy and black. A high school band strikes up a carol, someone flicks a light switch. All at once, it's Christmas. More specifically, it's a Carmel Christmas -- simple and low-key. Carmel's tree-lighting ceremony is lovely, but the garlands of lights never quite outshine the trees they're strung from.

"The people who founded this city were artists, poets, playwrights, painters," says mayor Ken White. "Our perception of what beauty is and how to preserve it is fundamental."

In a village so dedicated, Christmas possesses a particular resonance. Crowded in summer, Carmel feels almost lonely on a December afternoon, when cool gray skies threaten rain. The sense of peace is restorative. It's as if at Christmastime, this town that has nurtured so many poets now gets a chance to regain the poetry within itself.

The true Carmel -- officially, Carmel-by-the-Sea -- comprises but I square mile and 4,200 residents. Outlying areas may share the name, but not, entirely, the character. "We don't have sidewalks in residential neighborhoods," says White. "We don't have house numbers or streetlights. We don't mind trees growing in the middle of the road."

Such idiosyncrasies give the town its quirky charm. Lacking street numbers, houses are identified by name: Blue Skies, Our Reward. Lacking streetlights to guide them, residents venture out at night sporting small flashlights to illuminate the cozy dark. You half expect to round a dark corner and come upon a brightly lit cottage bustling with toy-making elves -- real ones, not Keebler's.

That wouldn't be entirely out of place in this town dominated by the arts and craftsmanship. Yes, Carmel had religious beginnings: Father Junipero Serra established Mission San Carlos Borromeo on the north bank of the Rio Carmelo in 1770, and is buried here. But writers and artists put Carmel on the map. Robert Louis Stevenson tramped Carmel Beach when he lived in nearby Monterey. At the turn of the century, a posse of poets arrived, lured by cheap land and gorgeous scenery. Poet George Sterling and writers such as Mary Austin created and caroused; an impressed Los Angeles Times titled its article on the little beachside town Hotbed of Soulful Culture, Vortex of Erotic Erudition.

Carmel's greatest poet arrived in 1914. Soon after, Robinson Jeffers set about building his famous tower. "My fingers had the art to make stone love stone," Jeffers wrote in his poem "Tor House." The house, with its stone tower, hawks, and unicorns, honors poetry and masonry both.

By the 1920s, vacation homes -- many of them built in the half-timbered Hansel-and-Gretel style perfected by local architect Hugh Comstock -- were popping up like mushrooms after a rain. The bohemian community soon gave way to the wealthy and staid, and Carmel became the retreat (in the words of one columnist) of "tweedy old bags in baggy old tweeds."

Tweed still draws holiday shoppers to Ocean Avenue, the town's main retail street. As for the poets, their legacy has been somewhat overshadowed by the more contemporary obsession of real estate (Jeffers's once isolated tower is now dwarfed by expensive new homes) and upstaged by celebrities such as Doris Day, John Madden, and Carmel's most famous ex-mayor, Clint Eastwood.

Even an enclave as unique and protective as Carmel is not immune from forces that want to make it bigger, richer, more like the rest of California. "All the little cutesy cottages are being replaced by huge cutesy cottages," Carmel Heritage past president Kay Prine. Mayor Ken White agrees: "The pressures to change are pretty strong."

They are indeed. But when you stroll Carmel in winter, change seems distant: a modest cluster of poinsettias in a courtyard, a choir singing in the mission, the surf at Carmel Beach -- the same surf that stirred Jeffers -- these are the things you notice. Like lights in a Monterey cypress, Christmas in Carmel casts a discreet but warming glow. Carmel lies 5 miles south of Monterey. From State Highway 1, exit at either Carpenter Street or Ocean Avenue and head west. Ocean. the village's main street, has a 3-hour parking limit in December, a 90-minute limit during the rest of the year. If you're staying overnight, your best bet is to leave your car at your inn and walk; if not, you can park at an all-day lot at Mission Street and 8th Avenue or beneath Carmel Plaza at Mission and 7th Avenue. You can pick up maps and other helpful guides at the Carmel Business Association (San Carlos St. between 5th and 6th avenues; 408/624-2522). Carmel Heritage (Lincoln St. and 6th: 624-4447) publishes a good free walking guide to historic Carmel.

Art & the Landscape That Inspires It

Carmel has art galleries the way some towns have mini-malls. Trotter Galleries (San Carlos near 6th; 625-3246) specializes in Armin Hansen, William Ritschel, and other 19th- and early-20th-century California painters. For photography, visit the Weston Gallery (6th between Dolores St. and Lincoln; 624-4453). founded by Edward Weston's daughter-in-law Margaret. It features photographs by Edward, Cole, and Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, and others who have lived and worked on the Monterey coast.