The weather was approximately 40 degrees warmer this year as members of Lawrence Central Rotary arrived downtown to help pass our programs for the Lawrence, Kansas Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade now in its 22nd year. It’s one of the most unique parades in the nation, the Lawrence Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade kicks off the holiday season with exclusively authentic horse-drawn carriages parading down Massachusetts Street. Attendees arrive downtown early to park their vehicles along Mass Street and open up the backs or sit in the beds of trucks and cozy up with hot cocoa and blankets, and feel the true holiday spirit while watching dozens of beautiful horses and wagons adorned in garland and bells roll by.
Club members layer and bundle up and walked up and down the sidewalks and along the parade route to pass out programs that list all the entries that are in the parade so onlookers can see how far some of these groups traveled to be in the parade.
At the same time at the Southwest corner of 9th and Mass other club-members took shifts wishing season’s greetings and ringing the bell next to the Douglass County Salvation Army‘s Red Kettle that raises money for the important work they do.
In 1891, Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee was distraught because so many poor individuals in San Francisco were going hungry. During the holiday season, he resolved to provide a free Christmas dinner for the destitute and poverty-stricken. He only had one major hurdle to overcome — funding the project.
Where would the money come from, he wondered. He lay awake nights, worrying, thinking, praying about how he could find the funds to fulfill his commitment of feeding 1,000 of the city’s poorest individuals on Christmas Day. As he pondered the issue, his thoughts drifted back to his sailor days in Liverpool, England. He remembered how at Stage Landing, where the boats came in, there was a large, iron kettle called “Simpson’s Pot” into which passers-by tossed a coin or two to help the poor.
The next day Captain McFee placed a similar pot at the Oakland Ferry Landing at the foot of Market Street. Beside the pot, he placed a sign that read, “Keep the Pot Boiling.” He soon had the money to see that the needy people were properly fed at Christmas.
