"I started the parade when my son was born hearing impaired," Amanda Dove told The Press.
She wanted something her boy could watch instead of just hear, so she built a street parade that ended at a Christmas tree. That was 23 years ago. The event she started with the Discovery Bay Lions Club has since become the town's biggest single gathering of the year, and it now shares December with two more parades that never merged into it, or into each other.
Most towns this size settle on one tree lighting and call it a season. Discovery Bay runs three separate parades across three separate Saturdays, organized by three separate groups, and if you ask why nobody has ever folded them into one combined event, the honest answer isn't tradition. It's the water. The town isn't one continuous waterway that a single fleet of boats can loop through. It's a network of connected bays feeding the Delta, plus at least one lake that sits apart from that network entirely. The parade calendar is really a map of who can physically reach whom by boat, and who can't.
The parade that never touches water
The Parade of Lights is the one that looks like a parade anywhere else: floats, marching bands, decorated golf carts, a Santa visit, and a crowd that lines the street. In its preview of Discovery Bay's three holiday traditions, The Press listed the 2025 parade's 23rd annual edition for Saturday, December 6, starting at 6 p.m. with a "toys" theme. The route begins at the Discovery Bay Marina on Marina Road, turns onto Willow Lake Road, then Riverlake and Sand Point roads, and ends at the Discovery Bay Shopping Center for a tree lighting around 7:45 p.m.
The tree itself has its own local history. Residents have funded and grown it over multiple years through sponsorships and ornament sales, at one point raising $20,000 in a single season to replace it after the town's original live tree was cut down and the Lions Club made do with string lights on a flagpole for a while. Local shop owner Lisa Combs of Uptown Trends sold ornaments through her store to help cover the cost. That's the kind of detail that doesn't show up on a generic events calendar: the tree the whole town gathers around exists because a handful of residents and a small business kept fundraising for it, one ornament at a time.
This parade is the one part of Discovery Bay's holiday season that has nothing to do with boats. Anyone who lives along the route, or anywhere in town, can walk down and watch it. That's exactly the problem the other two parades exist to solve, because most of Discovery Bay's holiday spirit lives on the water, and not all of that water connects.
The parade you can watch from land, even if your boat doesn't float
The following Saturday belongs to the Discovery Bay Yacht Club's Lighted Boat Parade. In 2025 it ran on December 13 at 5 p.m., and the theme, "50 years of fabulous fun," marked the club's own 50th anniversary. Boats stage on Kellogg Creek off Newport Lane, then cruise through a long stretch of the town's connected waterway: Starboard Bay, Drakes Bay, Indian Slough, Cabrillo Bay, Shell Bay, and more, before finishing at the Discovery Bay Marina. Fleet Captain Steve Riggio described it as "a really fun three-hour tour of Discovery Bay" that ends with a party, awards, and a toast at the yacht club.
What makes this parade different from the Willow Lake event isn't just size. It's access. Because the route runs through the shared bay system and finishes at the public marina, anyone without waterfront property can still watch it. The boats become visible from the Marina as they come in around 8 p.m., and residents who don't live on the canals can walk down and see the whole fleet arrive. The DBYC parade works as a public event precisely because its water is public water, connected to the same system that feeds the marina everyone in town can reach.
The parade only Willow Lake gets to see
The season closes the following Saturday with the Willow Lake Lighted Boat Parade. In 2025 it ran on December 20 at 5:30 p.m., organized by residents Stan Silva and Dick Kolda. Unlike the other two events, this one is restricted to Willow Lake residents only. Boats move clockwise around the lake with no assigned theme, leaving decorating choices up to whoever wants to participate that year.
The restriction isn't an arbitrary rule about privacy. It's a function of geography. The DBYC parade already advertises itself as a tour through the town's interconnected bays, and Willow Lake isn't one of the stops. If Willow Lake sat inside that same navigable network, there would be little reason to run a second, smaller boat parade instead of just adding the lake to the yacht club's route. The fact that Willow Lake has always needed its own separate event is itself evidence that its water doesn't connect to the rest of the town's canals the way the other bays connect to each other. It's a lake, not a bay off the same system, and the parade calendar reflects that split as plainly as a map would.
The three parades, side by side
| Parade | 2025 Date | Start Time | Who Can Watch | Route |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parade of Lights | Saturday, Dec. 6 | 6 p.m. | Open to the public | Marina Road to Willow Lake Road to Riverlake and Sand Point roads, ending at the Shopping Center |
| DBYC Lighted Boat Parade | Saturday, Dec. 13 | 5 p.m. | Open to the public | Stages on Kellogg Creek, cruises the connected bays, ends at the Marina |
| Willow Lake Lighted Boat Parade | Saturday, Dec. 20 | 5:30 p.m. | Willow Lake residents only | Clockwise loop around Willow Lake |
Where to stand if you're not already on the water
For the Parade of Lights, any point along Marina Road, Willow Lake Road, Riverlake Road, or Sand Point Road works, and the shopping center is the spot to catch the tree lighting itself. For the DBYC parade, the easiest non-boat vantage points are the Discovery Bay Marina, the Yacht Harbor levee path near the lighthouse, and Harbor Drive, where past viewers have parked along Marina Road and walked in with a folding chair and something hot to drink. The Willow Lake parade doesn't have a public viewing option, because it isn't a public event. If you don't live on that lake, the closest you'll get is hearing about it from a neighbor who does.
None of this is unusual for Discovery Bay. It's just rarely explained. The town's holiday season looks scattered across three unrelated Saturdays until you notice that each parade matches a different way people actually get around here: on foot along the streets, by boat through the shared bays, or by boat on a lake that was never part of that shared system to begin with. The calendar isn't disorganized. It's following the map.
If you're weighing what part of Discovery Bay to plant roots in, from the streets along the Parade of Lights route to a home on the connected bays or on Willow Lake itself, Deborah Maisterrena can walk you through what daily life actually looks like in each part of town. Let's Connect.
