‘Peace, love, and celebration’ on Hay Street

For 25 years, the Rotary Christmas Parade has dazzled thousands of residents and visitors downtown with Christmas-themed floats, decorated cars, dance troops, scouts, bands, and even the big man himself — Santa!

The Rotary Christmas Parade will take place at 10 a.m. on Dec. 14, hosted by the Rotary Club of Fayetteville.

The Rotary Club of Fayetteville is a part of Rotary International, a global network of people who work together to improve their communities and the world with a mission to provide service to others, according to the Rotary Club website. The Rotary Club serves the community through the annual coordination of the Fayetteville Christmas Parade and helps fund local projects and programs that improve the quality of life in our community.

Rotarian Brandon Price, who also serves as the CEO of the Fayetteville Area Habitat for Humanity, has organized the parade for four years.

“When the City of Fayetteville stopped organizing it in 1999, the Rotary Club decided to take it on, and this will be our 25th year of the Rotary Christmas Parade,” Brandon said.

With a history of large red and green commercial floats, classic cars, and homemade floats with gingerbread houses complete with smoking chimneys and rotating, lit Christmas trees, the Rotary Christmas Parade is going to add several new floats this year, according to Brandon.

“I’ll let them be a surprise,” Brandon said.

The Fayetteville Rotary Club was formed in Fayetteville in 1920 and has weekly meetings to discuss serving the community and determine projects at Highland Country Club.

According to current Rotary Club President and Public Works Commission Chief Customer Officer Carolyn Justice-Hinson, three area clubs, including Fayetteville Rotary, West Fayetteville Rotary, and LaFayette Rotary, all merged in 2019 to form one club.

“The parade is our club’s annual gift to our community,” Carolyn said. “The mission of Rotary is to promote peace, goodwill, and understanding through service to others. Each year, we are so proud and excited to put on the parade. I can’t think of a better way to fulfill our mission than continuing this beloved Fayetteville tradition that brings our community together to celebrate Christmas.”

With the joy of the season, Brandon said that organizing the parade is one of the club’s services to the community each year.

“We do all of this for free as our service to the community,” Brandon said. “Participants have to pay to be in the parade but the crowd gets to come and simply enjoy the show. This is one of the ways we serve. Leaders in the community coming together for a greater purpose — to serve.”

He said the parade is the one time where “the entire city, all demographics, come together to celebrate the holidays with peace, love, and celebration,” experiencing growth from 50 floats in the first parade they put together in 1999 to over 120 entries in the last several years.

“People from all walks of life — the haves, the have-nots, blue collar, white collar, no collar,” Brandon said. “Everyone just comes together singing and dancing and enjoying the true spirit of Christmas.”

One of his favorite memories included a heartwarming moment captured in a photo where a little boy received a fist bump from one of the Jeep drivers driving the parade route.

“That photo by photographer Kres Thomas is up in my office as a reminder of the beautiful world we live in,” Brandon said. “It was just pure joy and love between two people.”

Founding organizer Matthew M. Smith Jr. said he was listening to the radio 25 years ago when the DJ was talking about the City of Fayetteville giving up the Christmas parade and they were looking for someone to take over the responsibility.

“After hearing on the radio that the city would no longer sponsor the parade I went and talked to the city to find out more about what was involved and/or needed,” Matthew said.

He had a meeting with the city and prayed about it before asking the Fayetteville Rotary Club if they would be willing to take on the parade as a civic project.

“The Rotary Club agreed and the wheels began to turn,” Matthew said.

He had fond memories of the Christmas parade growing up, Matthew said, and wanted to keep the tradition alive for the community.

“When I was a child, my dad had a furniture store at 325 Hay St. that had large windows on the front of the building,” Matthew said. “Every year at Christmas time, my family would go up to the second floor, raise the windows, and watch and listen to the Christmas parade. At that time the parade was put on by local merchants/Chamber of Commerce and later the City [of Fayetteville]. It was a joyful time for all.”

He said as it moved forward, Johnson Chestnutt, a member of the West Fayetteville Rotary Club and a friend, asked if he could help. And the 25-year project began.

“In the second year of the project, Johnson’s daughter Pam joined us,” Matthew said.

Pamela Chan, or “Pam,” organized the parade for 13 years starting in 2005, following in her long-time Rotarian stepfather Johnson’s footsteps, along with Matthew.

“Since the beginning, it was always Matt Smith and my stepdad Johnson Chestnutt that organized it every year for the Rotary, and the Rotarians from the three clubs volunteered at different areas on the day of the parade,” Pamela said. “It was always the second Saturday after Thanksgiving.”

The date now fluctuates on Saturdays in December, but the premise remains the same: to provide joy to the community, especially for children.

“The Christmas Parade was founded with Fayetteville’s children in mind, whether there were 9 or 99,” Matthew said. “With all the talk about spaceships and trips to the moon, we were privileged to have a homegrown astronaut, Curtis Brown, from Elizabethtown as our first Grand Marshal for the 2000 Parade. To stay in line for the younger children, in 2001, Mr. McFeely of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was Grand Marshal, followed by Astronaut Bill McArthur of Red Springs.”

He said in other years they had Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat, Daffy Duck, SpongeBob SquarePants, the Rugrats, Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, Fred Flintstone, and Yogi Bear.

“One of the most popular, which appeared in three Christmas parades over the years was the Carolina Garrison of the Fighting 501st Legion of Stormtroopers, a fan-based Star Wars costuming club,” Matthew said.

Pamela said that the parade had once been sponsored by a local television station and they would help pay for the person honored as grand marshal and leading off the parade. The grand marshal was typically a character who made appearances in television, movies, or other entertainment. The 2024 Grand Marshals are Stanley T. Wearden, MU’s president, and CFVHS’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sam Fleishman, representing the Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine. But parade organizers decided to have Santa be the star at the end.

“Every high school was required to be in the parade,” Pamela said. “We would always have a couple of Rotary groups that did their fundraising by performing in parades including a pirate group with a boat, hillbillies that rode in a Beverly Hillbillies truck, a group in a limo that would do skits, and a group in the little go-karts.”

Matthew said all of the high school bands are still invited to participate in the parade and they do so.

They have also had beauty pageant winners, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, dance troops, organizations such as the Fayetteville Public Works Commission, the City of Fayetteville police and fire departments, area radio stations, horses, homemade floats that competed for best float, and a lot of nonprofit participants, according to Pamela.

“We ordered the commercial floats for some of our sponsors, and the children selected from the Cumberland County Schools would ride on those,” Pamela said. “Matt organized that part every year.”

And, of course, Santa is the premier attraction at the end of the parade. Per parade rules, no other float or entry can have anyone dressed as Santa to help preserve Christmas magic for the end — although there are plenty of Frozen characters, elves, Grinches, reindeer, snowmen, and more along the way.

“We want to build up for the anticipation of seeing him and Mrs. Claus on the last float,” Brandon said. “We’ve also had amazing crowd favorites like the Shriners Go Karts, the E.E. Smith Band, Douglas Byrd Band, and several others that draw a big crowd reaction.”

Matthew said having Santa and Mrs. Claus at the end of the parade helps signal the parade is over and for children to know that Christmas is around the corner.

“It is our goal to put on a parade that people, and especially children, will enjoy and bring people into the downtown area,” Matthew said.

Brandon hopes the parade continues for years to come, bringing Christmas delight to Fayetteville.

“I have been honored to serve alongside Matthew Smith, as this parade has been coordinated and organized by him and his family throughout the 25 years,” Brandon said. “The work he has done for our Rotary Club and this city should not be unsung. He looks forward to it every year and as long as he will allow me to, I’ll continue to pull on him for his wisdom and direction.”

He hopes that the Rotary Club will also continue to add to the parade and events downtown to help the city continue to be a place where people want to live and grow their families.

“Our Rotary Club is blessed to partner with the City of Fayetteville in getting this done,” Brandon said. “It’s fun to see everyone downtown for a few hours enjoying themselves.”

For those interested in attending, bring your lawn chairs and blankets and come early to grab some hot cocoa from one of the many coffee shops downtown.

The parade route goes from the Cumberland County Courthouse on Person Street to the Fayetteville Railroad Station on Hay Street. For more information, visit rotarychristmasparade.com.

Read CityView magazine’s “Home for the Holidays” December 2024 e-edition here.