Local News

Santa officially welcomes holiday season with downtown parade

Dodging raindrops and dealing with 20 mile-per-hour wind gusts, Santa and Mrs. Clause made it to downtown Shelbyville Friday to close out the city’s annual Holiday Parade.

Santa carefully dismounted from the back of a vintage Shelbyville Fire Department fire truck and returned to his traditional house now residing on the southwest quadrant of the Public Square.

With the help of Mrs. Clause and Shelbyville Mayor Tom DeBaun, Santa led the large crowd in attendance in a countdown to light up the city’s holiday decorations. The red-and-white clad Christmas couple then stepped inside the cozy confines of the Santa House and met with local children for nearly 90 minutes after the conclusion of the parade.

“This is one of my favorite things about having the job,” said DeBaun, now in his third term as mayor. “We’ve been doing this now for a number of years. We took this over in 2001 or 2002 and the city has been doing it ever since. It’s kind of a right of passage in my family. All my kids have helped. It’s turned into a wonderful event.”

 

 

The fourth Annual Mistletoe Market was part of the holiday event, offering food and craft vendors set up around the downtown area and inside Blessing’s Opera House. There were holiday horse-and-carriage rides and various performers singing holiday tunes.

The 2022 celebration was the second since the complete redevelopment of downtown Shelbyville.

“The downtown is much more amenable to this type of activity,” continued DeBaun, who helped direct traffic during the parade and collect candy tossed from various parade entrants to deliver to the hundreds of children in attendance. “It’s been a great night.”

 

 

Santa’s house had been moved out of downtown Shelbyville to a Christmas display at Blue River Memorial Park during the construction process and did not return for the 2021 celebration. Santa met with children inside the former Chase Bank building.

Now refurbished and decorated for Christmas, a line of children stretched back around the building and south in front of Cadillac Jack’s, 29 Public Square, waiting to meet with Santa and Mrs. Clause.

“People were kind of mixed about the tradition and what we were going to do with Santa,” said DeBaun. “The guys from the Water Resource Recovery Facility and the Street Department did a really good job of putting it back together. It took a ton of city employees to make this work.”

Get the most recent Shelby County Post headlines delivered to your email. Go to shelbycountypost.com and click on the free daily email signup link at the top of the page.

Search

Weather


Obits

Entertainment