Alhambra is changing quickly, and this year, as I prepare for my neighborhood Christmas gathering, I find myself thinking a lot about what makes a place feel like home.
For me, the answer has always been the same: our neighborhoods.
This is a love letter to Alhambra’s neighborhoods, for so long forgotten in this city in the name of bulldozing and new development.
Not just the houses or the architecture, but the way a neighborhood embraces you when you truly belong to it. The way people look out for one another. The way the simplest traditions can knit a community together. The way a street can hold memories, stories and a sense of continuity that quietly shapes our lives.
Lindaraxa Park has given my family that gift. It has given us neighbors who feel like extended family, a sense of peace that greets you the moment you turn onto the street and a feeling of connection that stays with you long after you close your front door.
Living here has taught me that neighborhoods are more than locations; they are living expressions of who we are and who we hope to be.
Our character homes are part of that identity. They are real pieces of history, reminders of where our city’s story began. They ground us. They remind us that beauty, craftsmanship and time itself matter. They whisper the stories of the people who came before us. And when we lose places like that, we lose more than buildings. We lose part of ourselves.
That is why my neighborhood Christmas gathering will have taken on a new meaning this year.
What began more than a decade ago as a simple way to meet new neighbors has become one of the most meaningful traditions of my life. Each December, we gather on Lindaraxa Park North with warm drinks, music, soft voices singing familiar carols and a shared hope that for at least one evening the world can feel gentle again. It is not a big production.
There are no sponsors or schedules. It is just people coming together because being together is the point.
It reminds me of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Not because of the holiday setting, but because of what the story teaches us. That a community’s greatest strength comes from ordinary people caring for each other in simple, meaningful ways.
That the small, quiet acts of kindness we offer without expecting anything in return are often what carry us through. And that a neighborhood’s value cannot be measured in square footage or market trends, but in the connections formed between its people.
That lesson has shaped me since childhood.
When I was a little girl in San Gabriel, my family could not afford a Christmas tree.
Wanting to surprise my family, I went around the neighborhood doing tiny odd jobs sweeping porches, carrying groceries, anything a kind neighbor would allow a child to do.
I saved my coins in a coffee can and walked to the tree lot on Las Tunas, proudly choosing the smallest, almost bare tree I could carry home.
A young worker must have told the owner, because later that day he arrived at our door with a full-sized tree for my family. I never learned their names. I just remember how it felt. Kindness arriving unexpectedly, and how it warmed our home.
That moment changed me. It taught me what community means.
And it is why I open my street, my home and my heart each December.
Because neighborhoods come alive when we care for one another.
My wish for this coming Christmas is simple. That we cherish the neighborhoods that shaped us, the people who define them and the homes that hold our shared story.
Because once you have experienced a place where neighbors become family, you understand its worth, and you hope future generations will be lucky enough to feel it too.
Marisol Grier is a preservationist in Alhambra.