Popular holiday traditions in the D.C. area are making adjustments this year due to the pandemic, including the National Christmas Tree lighting, ZooLights and D.C.’s downtown holiday market.

The National Christmas Tree lighting tradition started nearly a century ago, when President Calvin Coolidge strolled from the White House to the lawn on the Ellipse where a towering, 48-foot-tall Balsam fir tree awaited, along with a crowd of onlookers in heavy overcoats. This year, in the middle of a pandemic that is getting worse by the day, onlookers will not be welcome on the Ellipse.

The National Christmas Tree lighting will instead be live-streamed, like most everything else these days. It is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 3.

Another popular D.C. holiday event — ZooLights — is hitting the road, and coming to a neighborhood near you! The Smithsonian’s National Zoo typically attracts thousands of evening visitors during the holiday season to see its festive display of more than 500,000 LED lights.

This year, the zoo will instead deploy a 24-foot truck, dubbed ZooLights Express. The truck will be “festively decorated with light displays and featuring ‘Panda Claws,'” according to the zoo, and will visit each of D.C.’s eight wards in November and December.

The National Christmas Tree has traditionally been a live tree, growing on the White House grounds, since 1973. Last year, the tree was replaced with a 30-foot-tall Colorado blue spruce, transplanted from Pennsylvania. The previous National Christmas Tree, planted in 2012, was also a Colorado blue spruce. It was damaged by a windstorm in 2014, and by someone who tried to climb it in 2018, according to the National Park Foundation, which hosts the tree lighting along with the National Park Service.

The lighting ceremony will feature live music performances, and typically includes an appearance by the president. While visitors will not be invited to the lighting itself, they are encouraged to visit the tree later on — it will be lit each night in December.

Another D.C. holiday staple, the downtown holiday market, is also making adjustments for the pandemic. The outdoor market will have an expanded footprint — covering two full blocks downtown, including the roadway (not just the sidewalk as in previous years). The market will be on F St. NW, between 7th and 9th, and will feature 70 vendors.

The ZooLights truck will tour the city’s eight wards in numerical order on the following schedule, between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

• Ward 1: Friday, Nov. 27
• Ward 2: Saturday, Nov. 28
• Ward 3: Friday, Dec. 4
• Ward 4: Saturday, Dec. 5
• Ward 5: Friday, Dec. 11
• Ward 6: Saturday, Dec. 12
• Ward 7: Friday, Dec.18
• Ward 8: Saturday, Dec.19