It’s unknown if the Grinch plans to crash the party but the one and only Santa Claus has cleared his busy schedule to make an appearance Saturday night in the inaugural Philomath Parade of Lights.
The event begins at 7 p.m. Dec. 16 on South 19th Street near Clemens Primary School and will follow a route north to Applegate, west to South 15th, south to Cedar Street and west to South 13th and into the rodeo grounds.
Hosted by the city, organizers are seeing a positive reaction with a climbing number of float entries.
“I’ve heard from several nonprofits and businesses in town that are excited and registered,” Philomath City Manager Chris Workman said Monday night. “I think we’re up to 45, 50 float entries right now. That number could still easily double between now and the weekend. I think a lot of people are waiting to see what the weather is going to do.”
As of Wednesday, the weather forecast predicted partly cloudy skies with a small chance of rain.
Workman believes the parade is not only something fun during the holiday season, but gives businesses and organizations a marketing opportunity for “face-to-face time” with the public.
The parade will include a lot of the groups that you might expect in an event of this type in Philomath from law enforcement and emergency services groups to logging companies to the most active nonprofits. Mayor Chas Jones — there’s talk of him hauling around a couple of city councilors in the back of his truck — will be on hand to choose a winning float for the Mayor’s Award.
For those who love small-town celebrations, the event brings a holiday parade back to the immediate vicinity. Corvallis formerly had a holiday parade but that was last held in 2019.
“When that went away — and even when that was going on — I was like, ‘why don’t we do this in Philomath?’” Workman said when asked to explain how this event came to be established. “But logistically, we just never took the next step to really start thinking about it early enough in the year.”
Workman connected with Chief of Police Ken Rueben to work out the route and safety components of the operation. In previous years, Rueben had mentioned to Workman the idea of a holiday parade in town.
“There’s a part of me that’s excited to do it this year while Ken is still at the city and will be here to put it on,” Workman said, referring to Rueben’s anticipated retirement in 2024. “It’s a lot of work for the officers to shut down roads and reroute traffic and keep control of things but I’m excited to be doing the Holiday Parade of Lights while Ken is still here — a tip of the hat to him in appreciation of his wanting to do it.”
Organizers originally said the route would follow the same one seen last summer with the Philomath Frolic and Rodeo’s Grand Parade, which started at Chapel Drive and South 19th. However, it was decided to make a slight change and as a result, it will not go past the stretch of South 19th from Chapel up to the CPS entry road.
On another note that might be of interest to onlookers, organizers are not allowing participants to throw candy or launch other items from the floats as a safety precaution. Float entries do have the option of handing out items while walking along the route.
“We just want to keep everybody off the street and on the sidewalks and not give anybody any excuse to run out there … it’s a safety issue,” Workman said.
For those interested in joining the parade, an online sign-up remains available. There is a $15 registration fee for the first vehicle and participants have the option of including additional vehicles at $5 each. Horse entries are also accepted.