Brady Cates
bcates@uwyo.edu
For many individuals the holiday season brings the feeling of warmth and comfort, and in the city of Laramie it is kicked off with the annual tree lighting and Christmas parade in downtown Laramie.
Trey Sherwood, director of Laramie Main Street Alliance, collaborates with her organization and Downtown Merchants to put this event on and the theme for this year’s parade is Christmas on the Plains.
“We encourage the community to decorate their trucks and floats for the parade to get into the holiday spirit and it creates a nice festive atmosphere,” Sherwood said.
Sherwood said that the Big Dipper ice cream shop gets involved with the parade almost every year and they are always creative with their scene.
“Last year they made ice cream cones out of Christmas lights which was very cute and I’m pretty sure this year they are doing something with cows,” Sherwood said. “They are very creative and funny with their scene and that’s what this is all about.”
Sherwood said that there will be a live Christmas tree downtown and they will turn on the fire pit, serve cider and do a countdown with the kids to turn on the Christmas tree.
This event is open to anyone and people and businesses throughout the community are encouraged to come out.
“We invite school groups, business organizations, sometimes rodeo queens come out and even the Laramie fire department brings out their fire truck sometimes,” Sherwood said. “So this is open to the whole community.”
Sherwood said that one of the main focuses of the tree lighting and parade is to bring the festive spirit to downtown Laramie and to make sure that they do their best to get downtown looking as festive as possible during the holiday season.
There are a couple new events to this year’s agenda.
“This is the first year we are doing photos with Santa before the parade from 4 to 6 p.m. We are also taking donations for Toys for Tots this year,” Sherwood said.
According to the holiday parade and tree lighting event Facebook page, this will be before the tree lighting, so anyone can stop by Corthell and King at Second Street and Grand Avenue to have their photos taken with Santa and to drop off the Toys for Tots gifts.
Sherwood said the tree lighting and holiday parade event has been going on for about 15 years now if not longer.
Sherwood added that she was looking through the archives on downtown Laramie and they have been decorating downtown with lights ever since the 1940s, so they have been doing it for a while.
“Personally, my organization has been involved with this event for around 10 years, but I have been at this job for six years now.” Sherwood said. “So prior to that it may have been another organization coordinating the event.”
According to the downtown Laramie Facebook page, this year’s tree lighting and parade will be held on Friday, Dec. 4 starting at 5:30 p.m. from the First Street Plaza and the parade will start at 6 p.m. The parade route will head south on Second Street, make a right at University Street, where it will continue to First Street and make a left to Garfield Street before circling back to the Boot Barn.
“This is a nice time for family or whoever to come out and get into the spirit of the Christmas season,” Sherwood said.
