Creating A Christmas Cart

One of my favorite nights of the year in my little home town is the night of our annual Christmas parade.

In the 10 Christmases I’ve lived in Smiths Grove nearly all of them I’ve taken the time to go watch the parade. The last year I walked up and down Main Street watching the people as they watched the parade.

As little as 6 weeks ago I was planning on doing the same thing again this year. I was really looking forward to walking down the sidewalks bustling with people standing round small fire pits on the front lawns of the houses on Main Street turned into front row seats. I guess you could call the gatherings “parade parties.”

But after the very positive and extremely fun experience of dressing up as a pirate and handing out candy on Halloween I came up with another idea.

I decided that, this year, I was going to be in the parade with one of my ventriloquist puppets. Ideas began running through my mind about how I was going to do it. Most of the people, churches, or organizations that are in the parade are either in a car or on a flatbed trailer being pulled by a vehicle.

In 2006, the first year I started doing ventriloquism again, I rode on the Oakland Baptist Church trailer. I took my first vent friend, Calvin. Here’s what we looked like that cold December night 5 years ago.

But riding on a trailer, waving, and throwing out candy wasn’t what I wanted to do in the parade.
FYI, one of the traditions of the Smiths Grove Christmas Parade is that every those in the parade, except for the marching bands, toss candy to the spectators. A kid can get quite a collection of sweets just standing in one place as their confectionary distributing benefactors pass by them. It’s sort of a reverse version of “Trick or Treat.”

I wanted to walk along and interact with the crowd, especially the kids. Although I wouldn't be able to give out many of my business cards at least it was visiblity in front of the public. Getting out there and being recognized is good no matter how you do it.

I came up with an idea that would give me the mobility to get close to the crowd. I decided to push a cart decorated as a giant wrapped present.

I registered for the parade online by way of the Smiths Grove website. The sign up form required a description of your entry and how it fit into the parade theme: “A Small Town Christmas.” I came up with an idea that would allow me to use my new lion puppet, Leopold.

Based on the song from the Four Seasons Christmas album, Jungle Bells, I came up with a story of how Leopold stood in for Santa Claus to deliver presents to all his animal friends in a small town in the jungle.

I borrowed a shopping cart from the local IGA grocery store and went to work on it this week. My goal was to make a Christmas present out of the cart and put signs that read “Leopold Saves Christmas: on each side. I also wanted to set up a PA system using my Ipod to play “Jungle Bells” as I walked along the parade route.

With cardboard flats obtained at Sam’s Club I measured and cut the 3 sides. I only needed 3 sides because I was going to be pushing the cart while giving life to Leopold , who would be sitting in the cart’s seat.

I pieces bendable wire and poked them through the cardboard so I could secure the sides to the cart’s basket. Then I covered the cardboard with silver and red striped wrapping paper.

Here’s a picture of the initial stages:

Next came top of the box, the ribbon and the bow. I thought green would be a nice contrast. I wanted to top to be removable so I could store things inside the cart.

The signage for the cart proved to be the most challenging and something with which I needed some help. I took a pair of clear Plexiglas 11X14 sheets and spelled out the phrase “Leopold Saves Christmas” in 2 inch high gold vinyl self-adhesive letters. Although not perfect they were meticulously aligned on the plastic.

I then brushed the letters with white glue sprinkling silver glitter on them. The embellishment would give the letters some visibility at night. But I made a mess getting the glue and the glitter, not just on the letters but all over the otherwise plastic sheets.

That’s when Paula came to my rescue. She took at least an hour or more meticulously cleaning up my mess using nail polish remover. She then redecorated the letters with glitter using clear nail polish as a more effective adhesive. Here’s a shot of the final result.

 Next was the giant gift tag that would display the IGA logo acknowledging their sponsorship as I had promised. I learned from my lettering disaster and used glue and glitter in an efficient and effective way.

Using ribbon I tied the signs to the sides and front of the cart. It took some creative improvising but it turned out pretty good.

With cosmetic look of the cart finished I had to set up the functional features including the PA and music systems as well a means of dispensing the candy. I had a lot of candy and needed to have a way to easily distribute it to the spectators. I tied the handles of a black cloth bag to the cart handle so it was right in front of me as I was moving along the parade route.

Placing a microphone stand in the basket of the cart I used a flexible goose neck extension to position a microphone to be in front of me as I pushed the cart. The microphone was a novelty toy I bought at Wal-Mart. Press a button on the side of the mike and your voice was altered to sound like you had just breathed in helium. It made you sound like an elf. The toy also allowed you to use it as amplification for your regular voice and it had about a dozen popular Christmas songs loaded onto it so that you could play music and or sing along.

To make sure I could be heard I taped the lapel mike of my personal PA system to the bottom of the novelty mike. The personal PA system is a small battery powered amplifier in a imitation leather case that straps around your waist. It gives volume to your voice while giving you mobility.

By taping the lapel mike to the toy the ability to communicate with the crowd was established. Next I put a small portable stereo in the cart seat and connected my Ipod. This would allow me to play any Christmas song I had in my collection at any time along the parade route.

Also in the seat of the cart I placed a small wooden foot stool that my dad had made in high school. The practical reason for having this with me was to give Leopold a place to sit. The sentimentality of having it with me was that I felt like part of my dad would be in the parade with me. I know he would have loved seeing me go down the street with my puppet.

Here’s what the complete parade-ready cart looked like.

I am pretty proud of the cart. It was visual evidence of my creativity from concept to reality. It was my idea from start to finish. It took a lot of time effort and resources to make it happen.

At 4PM on Friday the cart at last was finished with only a couple of hours before the start of the parade. There was residual evidence in nearly every room in my house as to the extent of effort it took to create the cart. This included: tools, arts and crafts supplies on my kitchen table; a roll of duct tape, remnants of ribbon, and wrapping paper scraps on the spare couch in the living room, puppets and ventriloquist props strewn in my computer room and our “dog room.” Cleaning it up would be put on my weekend agenda.

The last steps in preparing the cart was getting Leopold ready and putting on my costume. I dressed Leopold in a Santa Claus T-shirt and hat. I had on an elf hat, complete with pointy fake ears and a string of jingle bells hung around my neck with an old shoestring and cascading down the front of me. They jingled every time I moved . I wore a brown long sleeved shirt and dark green sweat pants.

I took some last minute precautionary measures. I packed some extra duct tape, wire, wire cutters and ribbon just in case the cart sustained some damage on the walk down to Ed Spears Park. By 5 o’clock I was ready. It was time to go to the parade.

I’ll have more on that in my next post.