KYLE MURPHYStaff Writer

It will be like walking in a winter wonderland this holiday season as this year’s theme for the 67^th annual Christmas parade was unveiled this past week.

The theme of the Christmas parade was unveiled at the September Chamber Coffee, hosted by the Tullahoma Area Chamber of Commerce, at the Hands-On Science Center Tues, Sept. 26. Co-chair of the Christmas parade committee Greg Gressel said Santa made a stop at each of the four elementary schools in Tullahoma where he received input from the students about what the theme of the parade should be.

“They made drawings, they did colorings, they did writings and they talked about why this theme should work,” Gressel said. “We had incredible entries from all of our students in town after Santa made a special appearance in August.”

Gressel said the turnout for theme entries was incredible and the committee got together to read through the hundreds of entries before selecting the winning entry.

“The theme this year is ‘Winter Wonderland,’” Gressel revealed. “There are all kinds of things you can do with ‘winter wonderland’ and we encourage you to put on those creative caps and let’s support the parade and the efforts through ‘winter wonderland’ this year.”

Executive Director of TACC Hope Nunley said that the winning school who submitted this year’s theme was Jack T. Farrar Elementary, which will receive a free float entry into the parade.

Nunley also revealed that this year the parade’s route will be flipped.

“The parade this year will begin at Tullahoma High School and there will be three exit opportunities at the end. You can wrap up with a Jingle Mingle after party at South Jackson (Performing Arts Center), you can go straight or turn left,” Nunley said. “We really think this will be a great redo of the route and it will offer us more staging and safety.”

The final update Nunley gave regarding the Christmas parade was there will be a candy clause this year, where there will be guidelines about how to safely distribute the candy to keep children safe instead of having no candy distributed at all.

The Christmas parade’s grand marshal will be announced at the October Chamber Coffee.

The 67th annual Tullahoma Christmas Parade is scheduled for the traditional first Friday in December, which will be Dec. 1.