Six local boys and girls will be the junior marshals in Columbus’ annual Christmas parade on Dec. 14.
The junior marshals were selected based on their entries in a holiday art contest sponsored by Main Street Columbus.
Elementary students Sarah Ross, Reagan Sangster, Seth Johnston, Fisher Godfrey, Allie Vance and Leah Dawkins submitted the winning artwork depicting scenes inspired by the parade’s theme, Candy Canes and Christmas Carols. The students were judged by grade, creativity and artistic ability.
Shannon Bowen, a volunteer with Main Street Columbus, said this year is the first year Main Street Columbus has offered a holiday art contest but she deemed it an overwhelming success.
“When you think about it, the parade really is for the children and this is a way of getting them more involved by being junior grand marshals,” Bowen said.
She added, “We had over 600 entries. We had a really good response form all the schools. It was great.”
Reagan Sangster is a second -grader at Caledonia and said she drew a snowman singing Christmas carols because “I like to build snowmen.”
Fourth-grader Leah Dawkins drew people singing Christmas carols because she sings carols at her church. Dawkins said she, too, was looking forward to the parade and said the best part will be “having fun.”
Bowen said she hopes having junior marshals will become a tradition that will continue into the coming years.
“We’re absolutely doing this again next year,” she said.
In addition to announcing the junior marshals, Main Street Columbus also announced that Santa Claus would be the grand marshal of this year’s parade.
Barbara Bigelow, director of Main Street Columbus, said the decision to make Santa the grand marshal was made with children of all ages in mind.
“We had several wonderful nominations and the decision of grand marshal was not an easy one,” Bigelow said. “However, the selection committee felt that Santa Claus was the appropriate choice for grand marshal this year and who can argue with that? Santa makes children of all ages happy.”
The parade begins at 5:30 on December 14 and will be held in downtown Columbus. The parade was originally scheduled for Dec. 2, but was changed to accommodate an appearance by the famous Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales.
Sarah Fowler covered crime, education and community related events for The Dispatch.
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