The charge of the light parade

I was pleased to see that McCook’s Christmas Light Parade drew a robust crowd Saturday evening. It’s a welcomed confirmation that the event has become a permanent fixture on the community calendar and a must-do for families with young children. It is easy to assume that was always the case, granted, but the celebration’s success didn’t happen overnight, and its continuation was never inevitable.

Those early parades of the late 1990s were humble affairs. Finding parking sometimes took longer than watching the entire procession, which might include a handful of modestly decorated pickups or a float left over from Heritage Days that struggled to keep its lights working. The challenge of converting residential holiday displays into mobile, 12-volt systems was a puzzle few solved at first. It took several seasons for participants to master inverters, generators and low-voltage light strings.

Even when entries improved, the weather didn’t always cooperate. Bitter wind, single-digit temperatures and sideways snow persuaded many families to stay home, leaving a sparse audience for those parade entrants who were hardy enough to show up.

One small detail from those early years may have helped the parade survive. Unlike Heritage Days and other downtown celebrations, parking along Norris Avenue remained open. Parents would back their sedans into spaces and let children watch from the warmth of a car, stepping out only long enough to wave at Santa before diving back inside. This year’s crowd showed that the policy still matters, although the culture has changed. Instead of sedans backed in, a string of minivans, SUVs and crossovers lined the street, all nosed forward with hatches raised like miniature viewing platforms.

Our light parade has become a tailgate party.

If the notion of a parade–people walking in formation in ritual display–seems somewhat primitive, it is. Nearly every ancient civilization staged processions long before there were sidewalks to watch from. The Sumerians, Egyptians and Greeks marched sacred objects through city streets not as entertainment, but as public devotion. Medieval Europeans carried relics to ward off plague or drought. Kings and queens later turned processions into demonstrations of legitimacy, and political movements used them to persuade, not merely to celebrate. A community walking together tells itself what it values.

Even the most theatrical spectacles have always served that role. The Roman “Triumph,” ancestor of the modern military parade, transformed a victorious general into a quasi-divine figure for a single day. His troops, his loot, and even recreations of battle were displayed to bind war, religion, and political power into a single story. Modern military parades still echo that idea by displaying weapons and discipline as symbols of national identity.

However ritualistic or primitive the notion might seem, our modest demonstration of Rockwellian Americana serves a couple of functions. First, it holds up a mirror, showing that whatever challenges the community faces, we remain fundamentally sound. If we can still stage a fine parade on a frigid winter night, we must be doing all right.

It also has tought us the value of tenacity. Decades of parade organizers have persisted through harsh winters, made it through COVID and kept trying.

Now it stands as an institution. Children who attended those uncertain early parades in the 1990s bring their own children today.