LAURINBURG — The Laurinburg-Scotland County Area Chamber of Commerce will host its annual Christmas parade on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 3 p.m. along Main Street in downtown Laurinburg.
The parade will begin in the area of Railroad and Main streets and ending on South Main Street at Plaza Road.
“We pushed the starting time back an hour,” said Chris English, executive director of the Chamber. “We set it back to 3 p.m. just to get some floats more time to get in the line-up.”
Line-up for the parade will begin at 12:30 p.m. and the floats will need to be finalized and ready by 1:45 p.m. At 2 p.m., the judges will judge each float based on creativity, Christmas theme, the craftsmanship, public appeal and its special effects. Then they’ll deliberate and announce the winner.
The parade will also have entertainment from bands — featuring the Scotland High School band — but English is asking for more choirs to sing Christmas hymns during the event. He’s also asking for people to come out to sign up to be a part of the parade.
“We are pushing for more homemade floats, and they have to be Christmas themed,” English said.
There will be online applications to sign up for entrees — the fees are $40 for non-commercial and $60 for commercial — at https://www.laurinburgchamber.com/annual-laurinburg-christmas-parade. The first deadline is on Nov. 15 and applications that are turned in after the date will be charged double. The Chamber will no longer take applications after Nov. 25.
Floats are available for us and vary from full size for $650, half size $400 and quarter size $300.
English said there are also some sponsorship opportunities for anyone who is interested in sponsoring the parade and he welcomes any help that they can get.
“I just really want to encourage the community to participate, come out and make this the best Laurinburg Christmas parade that we can,” he added.
Octavia Johnson is a fall semester intern from The University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
