How the Lions Get Their Wreaths

Each November, grounds manager Patrick Thomas and his team create a custom pair of 6-foot-wide wreaths for the museum’s famous bronze lions. Here, Patrick breaks down the many steps involved in bringing this Chicago holiday tradition to life. As you’ll see, it takes careful planning, a fair amount of physical strength, and a little luck from Mother Nature.

Step 1: Order the greens.

The wreath-making process kicks off in August, when I call our supplier to see what kind of inventory they expect to have available in the fall. It’s always a mix of different kinds of evergreen branches, but we use pine, fir, and spruce. A lot of it comes from the Pacific Northwest and up north in Michigan. They source it from tree-trimming services, so no trees are felled in the process. I order about 30 bales of branches each year, enough to fill up a small van.

Step 2: Wait.

We can’t do too much until the weather gets cold. It takes a couple of freeze-thaw cycles for the trees to harden off, which sets the needle in the branch as the plant prepares for winter. If the trees are pruned too early, the needles will fall off. They’re usually ready by late October, but sometimes it takes until well into November, which can leave us pretty crunched for time. 

Step 3: Call the car dealership.

When I first started working here over a decade ago, I didn’t know where the bows for the wreaths came from. No one did, somehow. I was looking all over the place trying to find them, and I found this car dealership in New Jersey that had bows that go on cars for gifts. So I asked if I could buy some. They’re 26 or 30 inches wide. They’re huge, and they work perfectly.

Step 4: Sort, spray, cut, and bale.

Once the evergreen order arrives, my team and I separate out the biggest and best branches and spray everything down with an antidesiccant that helps keep them green longer. Then we make a pile of the very biggest ones and a pile of medium-sized ones, all different varieties, and cut them down so that each pile has branches of about the same size. While one person sorts them, another member of the team cuts them to length, and a third starts baling bundles together.

Step 5: Assemble, flip, and repeat.

Preciliano Gamino, our lead groundsperson, usually ends up being the one to actually bind the wreaths.

We use the same iron frames for them every year. They’re made up of two huge rings with cross members. Preciliano attaches each bundle to the frame with floral wire, laying them over each other and working his way all around the frame until the loop is complete. Then he flips the entire frame over and does the same thing on the other side, only it’s a little bit harder now, because he has to tuck the bottoms in underneath the bundles that are already there. Preciliano is incredibly efficient, though. He really has the process down.

A Team Effort

Constructing each wreath takes many hands—to select and carry branches, to gather and bind them to the iron frame, and, when one side is complete, to flip the entire structure over and continue on the other side.

Step 6: Wait some more.

Once the wreaths are made, which takes about three days from sorting to completion, they rest under a tarp so they don’t dry out too much before we’re ready to hang them on the lions. We always make them the very same week they go on view and aim to finish just a few days early, so they’re as fresh as possible. 

Step 7: Make good use of the leftovers. 

The branches that aren’t a great fit for the lions’ wreaths end up being used in the museum’s planters, so nothing goes to waste. We also have a tradition among our team: We make a little wreath just for us to enjoy at the office. And if there’s anything left after that, and there usually is, we can each make a wreath of our own to take home. We always look forward to that.

Step 8: Hang the wreaths on the lions.

The day after Thanksgiving, around 5:30 a.m., we’ll get to work putting the wreaths on the lions. It’s a big effort. We used to do it on ladders with a crowd, which always felt very high-stakes. But these days we have a machine with a bucket lift that two of us can stand in, which makes things a lot easier. We can get right up to the lions’ faces that way, and we’ve fashioned a little shelf in the bucket to set the wreath on so we don’t have to lift it so far ourselves. 

Each wreath weighs around 250 pounds, which means we need to be very careful. We put a moving blanket over the lion to protect it, and we set up a ladder for another member of the team, usually Preciliano, to guide the wreath. Sometimes he has to climb up onto the lion itself to get a handle on the wreath, but that is definitely the only time any sort of climbing is allowed. Then the guys all raise the wreath and put it onto the lion’s neck. There’s a certain spot on each of the lions that you have to hit where the wreath sort of falls in and sets itself. We make sure the wreath is very secure and then move on to the next one and do the same thing.

Step 9: Add the bows.

Once the wreaths are safely on the lions, we add the bows using floral wire. We do this last so we can place them exactly where they’ll look best and not worry about them getting caught or crushed while the wreaths are being set. Then we fluff them up a little so they look really nice. 

Step 10: Get ready for the cameras.

The lions wear their wreaths from the day after Thanksgiving through roughly New Year’s Day, and it’s always fun watching visitors stop by to enjoy them. There are many, many pictures taken with the wreathed lions every year. It’s really gratifying to see our work making its way into people’s holiday memories.

After about six weeks of holiday festivities, the wreaths have had their time in the spotlight and are ready to come down. We dismantle them, removing all of the greens, and put the frames back into storage to use again next year. It always comes around again so soon.

Like the work we do every day to maintain the museum’s grounds and make them beautiful spaces for our visitors, creating the lions’ wreaths is a tremendous team effort. Since last year, when we took the photographs that accompany this article and made this video short about the wreaths, we lost our great friend and colleague Juan Lopera Lopez.

An incredibly valued member of the grounds crew for over nine years and a kind and compassionate soul, Juan took great pride in his work—particularly the museum’s North Garden, which was his primary focus. We miss Juan’s presence every day, and we’ll particularly miss him as we make this year’s wreaths. His contributions and zest for life will never be forgotten.

—Patrick Thomas, manager of grounds, Facilities and Logistics

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