In the darker days of the pandemic late in 2020, when holiday traditions like Santa Claus Parades were being cancelled left and right, Leigh Polhill noticed the decorations on her 2012 Dodge Journey – Christmas lights, an inflatable penguin passenger, and her dog decked out in a Santa hat – were breaking through the dreary mood.
“I drove around my neighbourhood and saw people’s faces go from ‘this really sucks’ to smiling and pointing and almost laughing,” Polhill said. “It was something different and happy, considering everything that was going on.”
This hatched an idea. Polhill took to Facebook and set up a group to organize a parade of local cars decorated for the holidays for her small Etobicoke neighbourhood of Alderwood. The event attracted 10 cars, including an ambulance and police car. An estimated 1,000 people lined the streets to join in the fun, all at a safe social distance, while collecting supplies for the local food bank.
“You’ve got the community coming together to try and spread a little cheer during this rough time,” Polhill said. “(Pre COVID-19), it hadn’t happened in a while because everybody sticks to themselves. I feel like this changed things a little bit, for sure.”
One neighbourhood parade turned into four throughout the months that followed, and the Christmas parade ran for a second year in a row in early December with 10 cars signed up again within hours of the announcement. Daniel Antunes entered his right-hand-drive 2005 Honda Acty, which he decorated with lights and an inflatable Santa in a race car. Jamie Ackerman, a self-professed car guy, jumped at the chance to participate with his 2019 Volvo S60. Ackerman’s been decorating his cars for the holidays since he was in college. During the first parade in 2020, he was thrilled to see his son’s excitement.
“He wasn’t in the car with me, he was on the side of the road watching the parade,” Ackerman said. “When I went down the street he was on, he went crazy. It’s just so fun.”
Ackerman and Antunes say they’ll take the decorations off their cars after the parade is done, but Polhill plans to keep hers going through the holidays and likely beyond.
“The lights, I think I took them off last January,” she said. “To be honest, I had garland on my car with lights until October. … I like to see people smile. I grew up in the Alderwood area, and it was very community oriented. If I can help bring it back to that in some small way, even if it’s once a year, it’s worth it.”
Celebrating Chanukah on the Road
The Alderwood parades are just one way Canadians spread cheer by decorating their cars for the holidays.
In the city of Côte-St-Luc on the island of Montreal, the Jewish community has been celebrating the first night of Chanukah for 35 years with cars parading through the streets.
This year’s parade was the largest in the event’s history with more than 100 cars participating, many of which were decorated with their own Chanukah menorahs, said Rabbi Tzemach Raskin of Beth Chabad Côte-St-Luc. The parade started with lighting a large outdoor menorah and then took three hours to reach its downtown Montreal destination, and observers sang and danced along to Chanukah music that played through loudspeakers mounted on some of the cars.
“Chanukah is about adding light to the world,” Rabbi Raskin said. “That’s why, throughout history, the menorah was always something lit outside, at the front door or at the window. … We put the menorah on our cars so that (people see them) wherever we go.”
Making Automotive Enthusiasm Festive
Some automotive enthusiasts want to join in the fun, but the salt and sand used on Canadian roads in winter can play havoc with rust-prone classics. Jen and Jeremy Vasquez of Lindsay, Ont., have found a solution: rather than driving around in their husband-and-wife pair of Honda Preludes and risking damage, they decorated and photographed them in their driveway and shared the pictures on Instagram instead.
“The car community loved it, but when I was doing it in front of the house, my neighbours thought I was crazy,” said Jen Vasquez, who shared the photos on her account @katsumi_bb6. “They were like, what the heck is wrong with this girl?”
The couple shares their passion for their Preludes with a small friend-based enthusiast group they’ve dubbed the Ludatics, and they found the idea for decorating their cars through members of another group based in the United States called Prelude Nation.
“Some people had actually wrapped their whole car and put lights on, and I was like, how come nobody in Canada is doing that?,” she said. “It has the potential to cheer people up – just apparently not on my street,” she added with a laugh.
In our neighbourhoods, communities, or online, it’s these moments of laughter and joy — whether made possible by our cars or otherwise — that make the holidays so special.
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