The Boneheaded Moves Made By Anniston Over The Christmas Parade And Tree Lightning Ceremony

Last Friday, Main Street Anniston wanted to start a tradition, where every Christmas season there would be a Christmas tree lighting ceremony.  I thought, how cool!  Many cities do a Christmas tree lighting each year.  And I was thinking there would be a good-sized pine tree decorated with lights and ornaments.  Instead, I witnessed a horrible ceremony.  Where there were few Christmas lights, and the Christmas tree was the size you see in many living rooms.  Really, it was like that Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  When they lit the few decorations at 6 pm, they literally had to plug-in everything one by one.

There were also promises for hot chocolate, carolers, and other activities anyone can enjoy.  Nope, none of that happened.  Just turning on a few lights, and that was it.  So much for an event that was supposed to last from 6-8 pm.  A couple of people asked me at the event if there would be more things happening, I told them no.  And nothing else much happened.  People who went to this poor event vented on social media.

Zinn Park would have looked beautiful with a good-sized Christmas tree along with Christmas decorations.  People could pull up in their cars and enjoy the Christmas beauty.  Instead, people see this extremely small Christmas tree and wonder, where are the decorations at?  All the decorations, including the small Christmas tree, lights in a few shrubs, two small Christmas reefs, and some lights on a fence, looked like something a very small town with a few hundred people would do.  Anniston has over 23,000 people living in town, and the entire Anniston/Oxford metro has over 100,000 people.

Other towns with a similar population do a much better job.  The Gadsden area had a big tree and activities for their lightning ceremony.

And Hoover did a really great job for their Christmas tree!

Come on Main Street Anniston, you knew you could do a better job with Christmas.  If you look up and down Quintard Avenue and Noble Street, you see plenty of great Christmas lights and decorations.  Zinn Park could have benefited from some wonderful Christmas cheer that would attract a lot of people and maybe even spend some money in downtown.  Instead, you did a poor job with this Christmas and people left disappointed and upset.  But who cares, downtown Anniston is still filled with numerous empty buildings, and is struggling to keep the current businesses in operation.  This picture below sums up downtown Anniston in a nutshell.

And if you think the issues with Main Street Anniston were bad, let’s talk about some more horrible planning from the City of Anniston.  Tuesday night was supposed to be night of the Anniston Christmas parade.  Because of rain the parade had to be moved.  But, the day and time the parade will be held now has upset many people once again.  The parade will be held on Thursday night, the same night and time the Oxford Christmas Parade will be held.  Keep in mind, many participants and floats participate in BOTH parades!  And I talked about that in a tweet.

Because of Anniston’s dumb move, many people have gone to the Anniston Christmas Parade Facebook event page and have posted their displeasure about this rotten move.

So I guess the dirty, old, rotten Grinch is going to win this Christmas around here.  Anniston, why did you schedule the make-up date at this time?  Was Friday or Saturday night not good?  Those nights are not school nights and would have brought out a larger crowd.  Because of your poor planning, people and participants now have to decide which parade to go to.  It will cause both parades to be shorter and the crowds to be smaller.  And yes, this means I have to make a decision.

I think I will do the Oxford Christmas Parade, and I hope most people goes to the Oxford parade!  Anniston made a boneheaded move and I hope most choose to punish Anniston and attend the Oxford parade!  This is once again another painful lesson to the people running the City of Anniston and Main Street Anniston.  How about make better decisions?  And quit being stupid!  Your moves are not helping making Anniston better, it’s helping to make Anniston worse.  Come on man!

Well, enjoy the few pictures from the lightning ceremony below.

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