LYNN — When you talk to Jay Walsh about Lynn’s Christmas parade, his excitement for the yearly tradition is palpable.
Although in his eighth year as head organizer, Walsh’s connection with the celebration goes back to its inception.
“I’ve never missed one,” he said.
Thirty-four years later, the event has grown into a massive, 75-float spectacle that draws thousands of onlookers every Christmas Eve who line the streets of the procession’s 26-mile route hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus on top of the giant fire truck.
It’s even more impressive when you consider the parade’s humble beginnings. It originated when one of the Walsh’s family friends, Rich Viger, showed up on the family’s doorstep one Christmas Eve to take then-five-year-old Jay on a hunt to investigate police scanner reports of Santa riding a cruiser in Saugus.
“I was thinking, nowadays, nobody would allow this,” Walsh said with a laugh. “The neighborhood guy … takes a kid on Christmas Eve and puts him in a pickup truck to go chase something he heard on the police scanner.”
However, Walsh was enthralled by the late-night joyride, and Viger convinced Walsh’s father to help him put together something similar for Lynn families the following year. The city’s first-ever Christmas parade consisted only of a single repurposed oil truck decorated with an old horse-drawn sleigh and six plastic reindeer from Rich’s Department Store.
As the parade has grown, Walsh said it’s still managed to keep that same homespun feel.
“It’s not perfect, and it’s not meant to be,” he said.
Walsh, who moonlights as Councilor of Ward 7 in Lynn and oil plumber for his father’s company, John’s Oil, the rest of the year, takes pride in the fact that the parade has become an intergenerational tradition. He says even Lynn natives who have settled elsewhere make their way back year after year to enjoy the parade with their kids, and his own daughter, now nine, has ridden on the family float with her father and cousins every Christmas Eve since she was three.
For him, the parade serves both as homage to the city that raised him, and as a tribute to Viger, who died in 2013.
“When Richie passed, it was painful,” he said. “He was that neighborhood guy who just took care of us. He never married, he never had children. This was what he did, and he loved doing it. For us to keep that going, it (means) a lot.”
Walsh insists none of it would be possible without the help of community members who dig into their own funds and spend hours of personal time every holiday season to put together something special for the city.
“We don’t raise a lot of money for this parade, but I’ll tell you, everything you see is what people have pulled together out of their own pockets,” he said. “That’s why it works. The people themselves are the ones doing it.”
