As Stockbridge lights up its town with Christmas lights shining bright blue, red, green and yellow, the community comes together to watch the light parade go by with big smiles on their faces.
One of those smiles is from senior Kortni Stitt, a student who loves going to the light festival each year with her family.
“I go every year with my family and we have a blast,” Stitt said. “We play board games like Clue or Put the Hat on Santa and even make crafts uptown. My little cousins sit on Santa’s lap and take pictures while we wait for the parade to start and we watch it go by drinking the hot chocolate my dad gets from Mugg & Bopps. But I am very sad that this might be the last year that we will get to watch it as a community.”
The Christmas light parade normally lasts anywhere from 15-30 minutes and businesses all over town come together to decorate their floats. The Stockbridge Bowl accessorizes the bed of a truck with a bowling pin on the back bombarded with Christmas lights.
“While decorating the back of Jason Calhoun’s truck, we came with some issues on our float,” senior Matthew Poole said. “We barely made it in time with the float but I helped Mike make bowling pins that light up.”
Timing is everything when it comes to coordinating the Festival of Lights, and with rush-hour traffic coming through town at the beginning of the parade, the roads can become chaotic.
Stockbridge’s very own emergency service is dedicated to helping the community. In addition to helping out, they bring their own festive spirit with them which includes dressing up their ambulance with lights all around it every year.
Ivori Hufnagle, a Stockbridge graduate who has been part of the SAESA Explorers program since the 6th grade, helps out at the station.
“I have been working with SAESA for about 5 years,” Hufnagle said. “I do Explorers and we help with the traffic for all events uptown, not just the parade. We all love seeing the people’s smiles while they are being safe.
The holiday season fills everybody’s spirits up, and as soon as you start seeing Christmas lights, you know it’s that time of year. With the parade coming to an end with everyone floats this might be the last year that they will have it.
“I loved putting the parade together. It was very stressful and hard getting people to do the parade but at the last second, we had a bunch of companies reach out,” Foxy Rebels owner Andrea Place said.
