This year’s Festival of Lights and Christmas on the Square event held by Levelland MainStreet was a success for the Levelland community MainStreet program and MainStreet manager Tania Moody continues to go through extensive planning and preparation to have this event become a continuous success. Providing quality of life events and making the downtown area of Levelland an appealing and welcoming place to spend free time, Moody and the MainStreet board work to provide the community with holiday cheer.
With more than a decade’s worth of Christmas on the Square events, the Levelland community has seen various themes and different attractions. “We’ve had different parade themes and typically we meet with our committees to get our decisions finalized,” explained Moody. “We chose a theme every year and for this year it is a West Texas Christmas, which is geared toward the different elements of west Texas.” For this year’s event, South Plains College was able to join the festivities to incorporate student and overall campus life with the Levelland community. With their annual tree lighting of all 34 trees on the main campus grounds, the event kicked off with community members listening to holiday music from the SPC band while SPC President Robin Satterwhite gave a short speech to begin the lighting process. The current SPC Miss Caprock capped off the short presentation and resulted in all trees brightly lit for spectators. Following the tree lighting, the lighted parade began at the SPC lighted parade began at the SPC campus and went through the heart of the campus before traveling down College Avenue to make their way downtown.
“The competition was fierce this year,” said Main Street manager, Tania Moody, “the theme was on point, and we had over 30 individual units, from floats, to lighted cars, to lighted horses, making it the longest lighted parade we’ve had to date. A huge thank you to everyone that spent their time, money and efforts to lovingly put these together for us all to enjoy!”
For the competition, the judges deliberated and were happy to announce the following winners: First Place: City of Levelland Parks Department; Second Place: The Mallet Event Center; Third Place: The High Plains Cowboy Church and the Best Student Float was Levelland ABC, winning $500 for their school.
Moody gave her thanks to Tanner Terrell Edward Jones, T & S Antique, Craft Mall and KLVT Radio for providing the cash prize for the best student float.
Once the parade made its way to the square Santa and Mrs. Clause made their way to the Gazebo on the courthouse lawn for families and children to visit.
Spending the remaining part of the evening under Christmas lights surrounded by holiday activities and a bustling downtown, community members were able to relax and enjoy the atmosphere.
Making sure this event goes off without a hitch, the unsung group of the event is the Marigold group according to Moody. “They work with us on a few different things such as the lighted window decorating contest,” said Moody. “They take the time to cover the courthouse trees in lights and spend time behind the scenes making these holiday events great.”
The window contest and the lighted parade provide an opportunity for community members to engage in quality events and spark friendly competition.
“We want to be as fair as possible and we know a lot of people put a lot of effort into parade floats and a lot of effort into decorating,” explained Moody.
Levelland ISD brought the musical talents of their choirs from ABC, Capitol, LIS, LMS and LHS to entertain the crowds, and Moody Multi-Media Services, Stuart and Sam Moody donated their sound system and services to amplify the choirs.
Additionally, while holding exciting quality of life events, groups such as Marigolds encourage shopping local with their local contests during the month of December.
For this event, the inclusion of family fun and being together was one of the main goals for Moody when piecing this event together.
“Helping the kids and families have a good time is one of the things that we have listened to our community about,” said Moody. “They really wanted us to gear the event more towards family friendly activities.”
“Back in the day, mom stayed home and when mom and dad went out, they didn’t always take the kids,” added Moody. “Nowadays people really take their kids a lot of places and so we want to we want to fit into that. They want to make sure that we especially for the holidays that we’re really creating that family atmosphere.”