It started eight years ago with 75 motorcycles and about 100 toys.
By 2017, the Holiday Light Parade and Toy Drive had grown to dozens of walking, driving and riding and walking entries on two wheels, four wheels or more, and more than 2,500 toys collected.
This year should be even bigger, said Ted Hayes, the founder of the parade who’s helping to promote it this year. It’s now led by The Salvation Army and Nate Tuttle of the Christian Men’s Group of Brown County.
The parade will step off at 6 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, starting from the Brown County High School parking lot and snaking around the familiar parade route in downtown Nashville.
In addition to a variety of entries — all of them lit up — the parade will include the high school marching band, he said.
Anyone who wishes to participate is still welcome to do so. You don’t have to sign up in advance.
The entry fee for anybody in the parade or just watching it is a new, unwrapped toy to be given to The Salvation Army. No stuffed animals, please.
If you want to be in the parade, meet at the high school parking lot at 4 — “your animals, your bicycles, anything you’ve got that you can light up, even yourselves,” he said.
If you want to watch, line up along Jefferson or Van Buren streets shortly before 6. You can hand your toy to people in the parade who will be collecting them and taking them back to the Salvation Army that night.
Big Woods donates pizzas to feed the volunteer toy-unloaders that night.
Those toys will be sorted, and then set out for parents to “shop” on a different date who otherwise may not be able to buy Christmas gifts for their children.
This cause is particularly near to Hayes’ heart; he used to be one of those children. He remembers an aid organization delivering the gifts to his home. “It’s got to do something to the parents,” Hayes said.
That’s not what will be done with these toys. The Salvation Army allows parents to come in and pick things out and have them wrapped, then come back and pick up the gifts later so that the parents get to be the givers.
“It’s one thing to be needy, but for people to purposely or unpurposely make you feel that way, that’s totally different,” he said.
Any parent who wishes to get on that list can contact Hayes at 812-720-0322, Tuttle at 812-327-0637 or The Salvation Army at 812-988-7019. Jail inmates can participate as well by giving the names of their children to The Salvation Army.
“These kids didn’t ask to be in a lot of situations that they’re in. Some of their parents didn’t ask to be in these situations,” like a lost job, illness or disability, he said.
“Doesn’t matter. Kids still should get gifts on Christmas.”
Before the parade, holiday revelers can come downtown to Hayes’ shop, Mulberry Cottage on West Main Street, to visit with Mr. and Mrs. Claus and “The Grinch of Brown County,” John Kennard. The three parking spots in front of the shop will be blocked off for photo ops between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.
That’s going to be a busy Saturday downtown, with the Brown County Community Foundation’s Stuff a Stocking and the Brown County Historical Society’s log cabin and country home tour also happening.
No matter the weather, the parade will go on. “We never don’t have it. God always makes the weather bearable,” he said.
“The bottom line is kids. That’s he whole purpose for all of this. … Anytime you do something good, you just never know what the full outcome will be.”
