15 Dec Christmas Parade 2019 – First Place Winner Again!
Our church has created a float for the annual High Springs Christmas Parade for only the past two years – and has taken home the 1st place award both times!
In coordination with the “Christmas at the Movies” parade theme this year, our entry captured the spirit of one of the most loved Christmas movies of recent years, The Polar Express. Jerry and Crystal Swilley allowed us the use of their workshop for creating a locomotive (which also saw use at the Mount Dora Christmas Party a week earlier), complete with smoke billowing from the locomotive’s smoke stack, and a mountain tunnel illuminated in blue. Topiaries, “ice cubes” made from styrofoam, wrapped gift boxes, and lots and lots of white Christmas lights finished-off the float. Several of us walked the parade route, including our ‘conductor’ and his wife (Jerry and Crystal Swilley), ‘servers’ based on the movie’s hot chocolate scene (Tim Spivy and Jim Meredith), and several pajama-clad ‘children’ including Beth and Jaxon Phillips, Gretchen, Julia and Lilly Buck… all while Kinsley Swilley ‘drove’ the train.
The ‘clincher,’ however, was the addition of falling snow, thanks to a snow machine provided by George and Nancy Yeargin. According to parade judge and High Springs Chamber of Commerce President Connie Casey, the “falling snow pretty well clinched the win for them.”