Here’s the history of Christmas boat parades on the Coast

Bucking dolphins pull Santa’s sleigh. A giant shrimp is decked out for the holidays wearing a large fur-trimmed red hat. The Biloxi Lighthouse impossibly sets sails. Lighted palm trees sway on decks. Is that Santa Claus dressed in an Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts?

Impossible, you say?

Nope.

This scene is repeated every first Saturday in December. If you’ve never witnessed Christmas on the Water, you’ve missed one of the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s most fascinating home-spun traditions.

This annual parade of lighted, imaginatively decorated boats has been around 35 years – since 1986.

Pleasure boats, charter boats, sailboats and commercial fishing trawlers bedeck themselves in lights, holiday decorations and cutouts, including the lighthouse. The boats are filled with costumed and caroling passengers who delight the thousands lining the shore or anchored in their own boats.

Deep Southers inevitably compare the parading boats to Mardi Gras floats but these are actually floating on water and are decorated with winter holiday themes and gazillions of glittery lights.

Rarely are trinkets thrown, of course, as the distance from boat float to spectator is far. Instead, this is obviously an event for visual happiness.

“Clouds shrouded a sliver of moon, obscuring the seam between sky and water so that boats festooned with Christmas lights appeared to drift on air,” reporter Anita Lee, who still works at the Sun Herald, wrote of the 1989 parade.

Every year, holiday music also wafts from boat loudspeakers as many picnic aboard or on shore.

After all, Christmas on the Water is a great excuse for family and friends to bundle up for fun on a chilly evening, with temperature historically ranging between 48 to 60 degrees.

The merriment always comes to an end with a big bang. Literally. Fireworks near Deer Island make the grand finale.

The beachfront is markedly different from 1986, when the first boat parade sailed in the Mississippi Sound along the Biloxi shore. Commercial development and storms, the worst of which was Hurricane Katrina in 2005, has reshaped the marinas, piers, beaches and harbors used by spectators. Now there’s multi-layered, massive casino garages added as possible viewing perches.

One of the best known organizers remains at the helm of the parade, Rusty David whose enthusiasm for Coast water and seafood activities is legendary. The origin story begins at Mary Mahoney’s, a popular Biloxi restaurant and bar where locals meet to plan and organize as well as socialize.

In 1984 the Mary Mahoney for whom the restaurant is named was the first female president-elect for the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce. Mary, so the story goes, gathered colleagues and friends at the restaurant to discuss ideas.

“Mary announced she wanted to do something different and bigger for the Coast,” recalls David, a longtime boat captain who remains active with the Maritime & Seafood Industry Museum.

“We started discussing a Christmas boat parade that could bring the community together at a time of the year when outdoor activities for families are rare and a lot of the boats aren’t working. But Mary was soon diagnosed with cancer and the parade never got organized.”

Fast-forward two years and the idea hadn’t really died. David remembered an earlier Florida visit to Clearwater, which stages an annual Christmas boat parade.

“We heard music and we saw lights in the channel. We saw Santa Claus, elves, reindeer and more lights. It reminded me of Mardi Gras. It was really impressive,” David told then-reporter Marianne DuBose when she wrote about plans for the first-ever Biloxi boat parade.

The Christmas on the Water Committee, made up of local volunteers and boat captains, quickly formed and continues today. Through fund-raising from businesses, organizations and individuals and in-kind city services from Biloxi the floating parade hasn’t missed a year.

The committee, which calls this “a self-supporting event,” must raise about $30,000 every year.

The parade, not surprisingly, expanded to include fireworks, decorated houses along the parade, route, Christmas trees, land parades and a huge Town Green display of lights. These accomplish what the organizers had hoped: Locals and out-of-towners come to see, experience and repeat.

My daughter, who was in one of the first children’s parades, is now a grandmother, so three generations have made Christmas on the Water a family tradition,” David says.

“It’s also a Coast-wide attraction, and we get boat entries from Pass Christian to Moss Point. I’m happy to see that our parade inspired three other Coast cities – Moss Point, Gulfport and Pass Christian – to have water parades of their own.”

From Year One of the Biloxi parade, boats have competed for decoration prizes, often incorporating water and sea life themes. For safety reasons, the minimum size boat that can enter is 25 feet.

The first year when 35 boats participated, they paraded from Biloxi Lighthouse to Point Cadet Marina. Soon they needed more space for beach viewing and stretched to the Broadwater Marina.

Today, the Biloxi Schooners and the Gulf Islander excursion boat are among those offering tickets to watch from the water, but mostly spectators line the beaches and piers along the route.

In 2004, the year used to gauge the changes that Katrina wrought, 86 boats registered. For the parade that followed just three months after Katrina’s devastation, only eight boats entered and spectators were fewer because there weren’t even street lights to guide them. Bonfires had to suffice.

Community donors opened their wallets and $16,000 was raised for the fireworks, traditionally shot off at the end of each parade. The eight intrepid boats paraded, knowing they added normalcy to a beleaguered Coast.

With the Broadwater destroyed , the route again runs from lighthouse to the rebuilt Point Cadet Marina, and each year boat entries increase, with 35 expected this year. For those who don’t want to watch from shore, several boats including the Biloxi Schooners and the Gulf Islander excursion take passengers. I’ve watched the parade both by sea and on land, never tiring of the light show.

Usually when I research Coast history, I’m far enough back in time that I don’t reread news stories I covered as a reporter. Not this time, though.

The year was 1990. Sixty boats competed for originality, lighting and overall appearance. Thirty-two businesses and organizations from the Biloxi Port Commission to Josette’s costume shop had opened their wallets and donated time to stage this fifth Christmas on the Water.

I remember fun-loving crowds, despite drizzle and choppy seas, cheering on favorite boats. Henrieta Szetela told me she had spent 3½ days and 20 extension cords to decorate the Blue Marlin.

The Panacea’s engine troubles put it at the end of the line but not out of the parade with a lighted golden eagle atop her rigging. The Pocket Money performed an unusual water dance to grab attention. The Amberjack sported a live Santa on her bow. The Omega III displayed a patriotic banner, “God Bless Our Troops,” as a nod to the Persian Gulf Crisis.

If you’ve not experienced one of these imaginative boat parades, make it a happening.

As Tina Angela Calvert of Gulfport, then just 6 years old and bundled in Dad’s arms at the harbor, declared for all of us that year: “Ohhh. It’s pretty.”

Kat Bergeron, a veteran reporter and feature writer specializing in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes the Mississippi Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at BergeronKat@gmail.com or at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923