Memories from a 2nd-generation parade organizer

The Abbotsford Christmas Parade has been a part of my life as far back as I can remember. I think I was 4 when I was Gretel from Hansel and Gretel.

I have been a character in the parade ever since, only missing twice, once for strep throat and once for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary.

I remember dressing up with my family and going to the malls to earn money for the parade. Elsie Bremer made me a custom-sized clown costume. It was fun going to her house and seeing all the character heads. At that time we would dress at the old elementary school, currently the police and fire building. The parade ran from the elementary, down main street, heading north.

Once my mom started making costumes I became her model. One of the first ones I remember her making for me was Oscar the Grouch. All the Sesame Street characters walked so I had a real metal garbage can with the bottom cut out. It was cute but definitely bruised the shins. At that time the characters would do a meet and greet at the old armory building on Main Street.

The highlight for me was when I made it to junior high and got to be Princess Leia. When Star Wars first came out, there was a float for the characters to ride on. I believe the X-wing fighter joined the parade the following year.

You know that you have been around for a long time when things start coming back. We were thinking about retiring the Star Wars into something new when the second triology came out. The same thing happened to the Smurfs, Care Bears and others. The floats and characters would get retired. The Care Bears became the Grinch, Garfield the cat became the Packer snowman and so on. Twenty years later, these characters come back through TV or movies and a new generation of kids knows who they are. It is hard to decide, when we want to do a new float, do we take something out or update what we have?

The main concern is room to work on floats and space to store them. We have outgrown the shop and shed that the community raised funds to provide shelter for the floats. Luckily we have generous people willing to store the overflow in the months leading up to the parade so we have room to work and warm shops to work in.

My mom likes making costumes but not dresses. Luckily over the years we have had a few seamstresses who have made the princess dresses and the one for Mrs. Claus. Linda Schindler and Judy Rau have helped me out over the past 15 years.

We were fortunate to have Jim Schiferl come up with a successful fundraising raffle to keep the parade funded. He took care of collection of prizes and tickets for a number of years. Jenny Jakel has helped him and become more involved with costumes, floats and the raffle after the clowns were retired. Jenny would recruit and dress the clowns for crowd control. Over the years it got harder to find people willing to dress up for crowd control.

For the past 25 years I have been very active, not only as a character, but building and maintaining the floats. My husband Kevin and I have been involved with building 17 new floats and redoing 15 old floats. There aren’t many left that we haven’t had spent some time on. I have also helped my mom maintain over 275 costumes and finding people to fill them for a number of years.

I have said it takes over 400 people to pull this parade off the night of the parade. A handful of people do the majority of the work the months leading up to the parade to make sure the night is magical. Over the years, I have been fortunate to work with different people who have done it for a period of time.

My first float builders were my mom, Pat Hutman, and Kim and Kyle Kalepp. Pleading for more help, Brenda and Dean Wiese stepped up for a number of years and Dwayne Olson stepped back into help after taking a break from building Beauty and the Beast and Alice in Wonderland. That year we built the Blue’s Clues big red chair. It took 40 hours just to put the glitter on.

The time and dedication each float takes usually takes a toll on how many years people help. Shelly and Dave Bender have been a huge help the last few years. Each float takes hundreds of hours to build. It is definitely a labor of love. Nights, weekends, and events are given up in the fall to get things done by the first Saturday in December.

I want to thank my kids the most for the sacrifice of time that they have had with us not being around much October to December. They have come to help with floats and costumes when needed and have had no choice but to be in the parade each year. Luckily, I married a guy whose only hobby is building floats three months out of the year.