Lighting Up Mount Holly

seahorse lantern

Last night was the 8th Annual Mount Holly Lantern Parade, and for the 5th year in a row our community had an entry in the parade. Also for the 5th year in a row we took 1st place in the Group category. This year's theme was "Into the Deep Blue Sea". 

As we plan what we want to do we take a couple things into consideration: What is going to resonate with the kids who line the parade route?, and how can we involve the large number of people who want to walk in the parade with us? We have a core group of 8-10 people who consistently show up each week to build the lanterns. But we normally have 30+ folks who want to walk down Main Street with our group.

This year we decided to do "Baby Shark", the wildly successful YouTube video featuring a family of sharks and a few sidekicks. Mommy, Daddy, Grandma & Grandpa sharks were five feet long, not including their tails. Baby Shark was four feet and his buddy William the pilot fish was three feet. The other main character, in our minds, is Pink Fong who is kind of the mascot for the show. 

Once we built those lanterns, we moved on to ancillary items. We made a seahorse, three jellyfish, three schools of fish containing twelve fish each, seven starfish and four clams that were our first attempt at hand puppet lanterns. A crowning late addition was a coral reef that was worn around the waist of the carrier. It could have been an entry all by itself.

coral                                                banner

An Imagery banner led our entry, followed by a baton twirler with a lighted baton, then a decorated wagon with speakers playing the Baby Shark theme song on repeat. Two residents dressed as the little boy and girl from the video came next, running away from the sharks. We also had four people handing out shark-shaped small bags of candy. At the end of all of our lanterns was a wall of wavy blue streamers complete with lighted bubbles to signify the end of our group. All in all, we had 39 folks in our unit including two of our own parade Marshalls to keep us in order.

Imagery Lanterns

Though the night was a little cooler than previous years, it was a beautiful evening to be out. The parade went off mostly without a hitch. Baby Shark decided to act up and his pole disconnected inside his body. This caused him to drop down on top of my nose. Ouch! I was able to get him somewhat situated before we passed the judges station, but after that I just hand carried him for the rest of the parade. Bad Baby!

It was rewarding as always to be named First Place as we have been working since April to pull this project together. After the winners were announced, the organizer released the theme for next year - the "Wide World of Sports." All I could think was, ugh. The theme does not excite me, and I wonder what we can pull together that makes sense with the theme but will still engage the kids. What a challenge!