The Allendale Rotary Holiday Lights Parade
2020 has been a year of reinventing ways to stay active and engaged as a Rotary club while remaining socially distant and Covid safe. The Allendale Rotary Club hosted the Holiday Lights Reverse parade on December 5th. Entries and floats were parked along the parade route while the visitors remained in their cars and drove past to enjoy the lights.
Building the float for the Allendale Rotary Club was incredibly fun and creative. We were able to use a huge museum display case, a blower fan, and a bean bag chair to come up with an incredible, massive snowglobe!! A local fabricator cut a 4-foot rotary wheel that was used as the centerpiece for the snowglobe. Some trees, packages and lots of lights and we had a beautiful float.
The parade was held at the LifeStream church parking lot. The church has been hosting its own event, the Community Christmas Tree Walk. 50 trees were planted and each one sponsored and decorated by a company or organization. The Allendale Rotary Club’s tree was another opportunity to engage. Members each had their own ornament, a metal rotary wheel, and could enjoy the walk on their own and hang their ornament on the tree.
One of the club’s passion projects is the Early Literacy Initiative. The parade was an opportunity to collect children’s books for that program. It was also an opportunity to collect food and essentials for the LifeStream food pantry.
The community response was overwhelming. There were approximately 750 to 800 cars that came through the parade route in 3 hours. Books, food, and essentials were handed out of the windows. The pantry was stocked and a new supply of books were donated. A wonderful time was had by all.