KINGMAN — Downtown Kingman is all ablaze with holiday cheer that started with Mingle Jingle at Beale Celebrations and the Street of Lights event. It was a five block long, nearly 8-hour festival last weekend up and down Beale Street. It all started at one in the afternoon at the Beale Celebrations building with all kinds of booths for people to peruse for the Christmas season.
The mild, dry day and slightly cool evening drew a massive crowd to the original downtown Kingman area. Mingle Jingle in the “Celebrations” building was packed with displays and people. The available items were homemade baked goods, handmade jewelry, hand crafted dolls, scents, arts and crafts of almost endless descriptions.
All of this activity was a Kingman Downtown Merchant’s Association event and was born out of restrictions during Covid. Prior to that, this day was set aside for a parade along Beale Street. Joni Millin, event coordinator for the Downtown Association, talks about the transition.
“Everybody absolutely loved the parade, and they still love the parade, however, when we had to accommodate for Covid, we discovered that our sponsors were in front of people, not for the three minutes of an actual parade, but three hours the way it is set up now.”
The outside set up over five blocks of Beale Street was like a First Friday on steroids. However, The Street of Lights, as it is called now, is not lacking “parade” items. There were pom pom girls, bands, and floats, just like a tradition parade. The only difference was the people moved while the “parade” was parked. There were members of the Kingman High School Marching Band performing music typical of a holiday parade. The Kingman Bulldog pom pom dance group also performed.
And, oh yes, there were “floats”. They were parked horizontally along the Beale Street curbs. The meandering crowd could wander by at their leisure, taking a closer look at the hard work put into the construction and gather in the float theme more easily than if the float slide by.
And, Santa and the missus, they didn’t slide, momentarily by, aboard a moving object, they arrived in style in a “lights and siren” fire engine. That gave a chance, first, for a couple of admiring fans to greet them, but ultimately a huge throng of believers to gather around. Santa almost couldn’t make it to the Santa house set up for him.
The grand finale of the event was the lighting of the Locomotive Park Christmas tree and, not to be outdone, the dancing lights of not only the locomotive but of other trees in the park.
Photos by Vincent LeClair.
