Thursday, February 6, 2025

Christmas on Main Street, a community tradition

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AZLE — Since at least the 1930s, Azle has celebrated Christmas with a community tree. Back then, the tree would cycle between the three of the major churches in the area: Christian, Baptist and Methodist. It was up to parents and residents to ensure that each one of the town’s children would have a present and a sack of fruit waiting for them under the tree on Christmas morning. This was possible with the city only having a few hundred residents at the time.

Today, Azle’s Optimist Club echoes that tradition by lighting a Christmas tree outside of Azle’s Historical Museum every year in December, in a convention that has lasted over 40 years. According to the Azle News Advertiser in 1982, the Optimist Club began holding its yearly tree lighting after six Azle students presented the idea to the Azle’s Park Board. Board members approved of the idea and along with Azle’s Optimist Club made the proposal a reality on December 11, 1982, by erecting a 30-foot fir tree in front of the Azle Historical Museum. The ceremony also saw a performance from the Azle High School Choir, a display created by the high school’s art department and a skit featuring Santa put on by the drama department.

 Azle’s Optimist Club claims that not long after its founding in 1979, Jackie Carpenter, who would go on to be an Azle city councilmember, and other founding members of the club brought Christmas cheer into their own hands. With funds being short in the organization’s early days, they picked out the largest cedar tree they could remove from Carpenter's property and decided that Azle’s Historical Museum would be the perfect place for it, the club alleges. Azle’s Optimist club also credits Helen Conwell Short, a longtime Azle resident, with expanding tree lighting event to include a parade and visits from Santa in 1995.

In the early 1980s, Azle’s Chamber of Commerce celebrated Christmas with a Festival of Values and visits from Santa, who even arrived by helicopter in the parking lot of the old Mitchell’s and Myers on Industrial Avenue in one instance. In 1983, chamber members and Azle residents Lucille Maybery and Herman Younger worked together to organize Azle’s first Christmas parade. The parade consisted of 30 entries including a wagon pulled by a team of 10 one-ton steers that would later feature in Fort Worth’s Fat Stock Show. A merchant contest drawing and an opportunity to meet Santa would follow.

For their first few years, the Optimist Club tree lighting and the chamber of commerce parade would often take place on different weekends in December. In the mid-eighties, the parade would sometimes be a part of the “Christmas in Azle, Yule Love it!” promotion put on by the chamber of commerce and Azle City Council. As late as 1987, the Optimist Club tree lighting would converge with “Yule Love It!” and the two organizations’ Christmas activities have been closely intertwined since. In 2012, the Optimist Club again expanded the scope of the event by introducing bicycle giveaway and kid activities at 404 Main Place.