The town Christmas parade has undergone some big changes in the last few years. For many years it was held in the daytime, and it’s the same style as other local parades – it consists of motorized floats with the occupants of the floats throwing out candy, plastic cups and bead. Those watching the parade dash out for the goodies as they are thrown from the floats.
Then about two years ago the decision was made to have the parade at night. What the organizers hadn’t taken into account was that neither the spectators nor the float occupants could see things being thrown in the dark. There isn’t sufficient light from streetlights, and there are no lights on the floats either.
Bring up the after-dark Christmas parade to any Gueydan local and before you can get any farther than mentioning it, there’s an outrush of “Oh, it was awful!” It seems that people were getting hit in the face and elsewhere by the things being thrown, and some spectators were actually hurt.
We got to talking about it with Kenneth and Heuetta. As Kenneth said, “It was quite fun, really, once the paramedics got everything cleaned up.”
He continued on, saying, “We fightin’ back this year. We bringin’ spotlights and sling shots and hard hats, and slingin’ those suckers back! We takin’ lessons from the Civil War – the ones on the floats are the ‘blue coats’. We’ll line up and march; the first one in line drops to one knee and both can fire at once.”
Needless to say, we couldn’t wait to experience our first Gueydan Christmas Parade.
While we waited for the parade to start, we were serenaded by the speakers from the Baptist Church, playing Christmas music. Right across the side street was a disc jockey playing music in front of City Hall. Standing in the middle we could hear both of them really well. Then the City Hall speakers got much louder in volume. Immediately the speakers at the Baptist Church got louder. I whispered to Chelsea, “I think we’ve got a battle of the bands going on.”
The reality of the parade his year didn’t live up to its prior reputation. The parade started just early enough that there was enough light to get through the full parade and still be able to see. By the end it was getting pretty dark, but still light enough to have things be manageable. Chelsea and I dived for the candy and beads with everyone else – Chelsea scored with some huge bead necklaces and I scored with some crawfish necklaces. It was peaceful and fun, and best of all, no injuries!
The rest of the evening was absolutely wonderful. There’s small park at City Hall, and it was set up with a bouncy house for the kids, a free hot chocolate stand, an auction of Christmas items, a Toys for Tots collection area, a live nativity scene, a stand with free Coke and Sprite, a hay ride, and a fried Snickers Bar stand. The kids even got to have their photos taken with Santa, and a bevy of elves (Girl Scouts) helped around at all the events.
We wandered around with Kenneth and Heuetta, sampling everything, including the incredibly good chicken-sausage gumbo. We had several cups of the hot chocolate over the evening, and even had a glass or two of coke. It was a toss-up for favorite between the chicken-sausage gumbo and the fried Snickers Bar.
You may be wondering what on earth a fried Snickers Bar is…so were we. As Sean Gayle told us, “We’ll fry anything down here”. I wonder who on earth thought up the idea? The reality is quite tasty – it’s a frozen Snickers Bar that is wrapped in a pancake-like batter and then tossed in a deep fryer. The batter cooks up and the insides are soft.
Of course it helps if you like Snickers Bars to begin with, but that wasn’t a problem for us – we’ve loved them for years, and this was just an interesting and tasty twist on them.
The live Nativity scene was really sweet – the local Catholic Church put it on, and Mary and Joseph and the wise men were young school children. They were bored and giggly, but got serious the minute anyone came over to view the manger scene.
We even went on a hayride down Main Street – I can’t tell you how many years it’s been since I’ve been on one, and Chelsea had never been on one.
The whole evening was just magical – meeting the townspeople we knew like Hansford Hair and Sean and Jamie Gayle; wandering around in the cool evening air; filling up on hot chocolate and hot gumbo; chatting with those on the hay ride with us. It felt to us like we had wandered into the pages of a book about small town America many years ago.