Country Christmas Pageants Forced Off The Streets
Christmas in the country isn’t complete without a stinking hot parade in the town centre.
Streets lined with deck chairs, kids covered in tinsel, the smell of sausages wafting from the footy club BBQ, and the the bloke with the biggest beard or belly taking wishes from every kid in town.
But now, it seems even Santa can’t parade down the main street without a permit and a price tag.
Country Christmas pageants, which have delighting and united rural communities for decades, are being forced to move their colourful parades of Christmas spirit away from town centres — or cough up thousands for someone to take the road closure signs down once Santa’s hit the road and the kids have finished making memories in the street.
It’s all thanks to new compliance standards set by the Department for Infrastructure and Transport.
Hot, Chaotic and Brilliant – Christmas Pageants are where Memories are Made
I have fond memories of Balaklava’s Christmas Pageant — riding around the town “Triangle” in a train (which was probably a tractor with a few carriages hitched on). It was hot, it was chaotic, and it was brilliant. We’d lob water balloons from the carriages and squirt each other with water pistols while the crowd ducked for cover. The parade would roll past the pub, where locals spilled out onto the street with festive cheer. It was the ultimate catch-up — people coming home for Christmas, seeing old friends, and soaking up the kind of small-town magic you can’t fake.
It was always on Christmas Eve, and we’d have to leave in time to get home and tucked into bed before Father Christmas arrived.
Over the years, the rules crept in. The train got banned — too dangerous, maybe warranted. Water balloons and water pistols followed — apparently not everyone loved being squirted (school teachers were especially targeted).
And now, the pageant is being forced to relocate altogether — away from local businesses who decorate their shopfronts and enjoy the last-minute rush of Christmas trade, away from tradition, and away from the memory-filled streets.
And it’s here that I can’t help but ask — where does this stop?
I get it. Times have changed. The 80s and 90s are behind us, and maybe we were lucky to survive them. But one thing that hasn’t changed is how much work country people put in to keep their towns vibrant and alive. Sometimes it feels like pushing shit uphill.
It’s more than just a Christmas Pageant. It’s what makes a town. It’s the sort of event that reminds people they’re part of a close knit community – a community that will put in the time and effort to see a smiles on the kid’s faces.
We fight fires without pay, we’re volunteer paramedics in our “spare time,” we bake cakes, sell raffle tickets, clean toilets, crunch numbers for clubs and run events. Yet it’s too much to ask to have a few road-closure signs picked up after hours. We’d do it ourselves, but no-doubt that would be too risky.
If we want our country towns to stay alive, we need to make it easier, not harder, for community spirit to thrive. Because without the pageants, the street parades, the shared moments that bring us together — we all know what happens to small towns.
