It’s Gregory Holman, with Ozarks Public Radio.
Let me take you inside my own memory of Christmas past.
I was born and raised in Branson, Missouri.
Picture it: The Branson lakefront, circa 1982. I’m an elementary-school-age kid, a few years between winning a Kewpie doll look-alike contest and learning cursive hand-writing in grade school.
Now, picture me at my family’s house during the Christmas season.
At the time, our place was on the hill that overlooks downtown Branson — opposite the tall, stony bluffs on the other side of Lake Taneycomo.
It's early December. Atop those bluffs, childhood me can see the Branson Adoration Scene.
It’s like a giant Christmas card. It is a giant Christmas card.
I can see a manger scene, or a Nativity scene, as we called it in my family. From every point in Branson’s historic center, you can see the little baby Jesus, flanked by Mary and Joseph, the animals, the Wise Men. Over them all, the Star of Bethlehem shines brightly.
The Branson Adoration Scene, and the accompanying parade held each year on a December Sunday, is a tradition that goes way back before I was born.
In 1948, two Branson businessmen wanted to create a non-commercial celebration of Christmas.
This celebration still continues today.
'Generations of families in the same spot'
Branson Fire Chief Ted Martin has volunteered to help put on the Adoration Parade for more than two decades.
On Parade Sunday this year, Martin took a few minutes out to chat with KSMU at a convention center parking lot in downtown Branson, where Adoration Parade floats line up to march.
They were already getting ready to go some three-and-a-half hours before start time. A little rain sprinkled on Branson at this hour, but it didn't slow the parade preparations or keep families from putting out lawn chairs, staking a claim to their favorite viewing spots on the parade route.
Martin told me that Adoration Parade traditions mix the serious and sacred with sweet treats.
"I walk throughout every year with our Branson Fire Department," he says. "The fire trucks come at the rear, and they throw just tons and tons of candy out to the guests at the end of the parade. And you'll see families and generations of families in the same spot. It's almost like church: You've got that favorite spot you like to sit."
A little while before the LeCroy sisters took up their sacred singing, I swung by the mainstage area for the Branson Adoration Parade.
The mainstage is proudly decorated with a banner about “keeping Christ in Christmas.” It’s a simple setup, a trailer-truck bed with some folding chairs. A generator hums nearby.
Adoration Parade-goers who hit up the mainstage area on Main and Commercial streets in historic downtown Branson get to literally hear the celebratory tradition, with Christmas carols like "Silent Night."
The music comes from a group of Branson singers, the LeCroy Sisters. In 2024, they marked 20 years of annual performances at the Branson Adoration Parade.
It’s been years since I attended Branson’s parade myself, but it wasn't long before I met a family with a generational habit of celebrating Christmas with the Branson Adoration Parade, just like Fire Chief Martin predicted.
'Christmas magic'
Tamra White is one of those generational attendees of the Branson Adoration Parade. She calls it "Christmas magic."
"The only thing I can — it's just Christmas magic. I mean, just all the lights and all the people, and when the people get up there on stage, so many people just get quiet and listen to the Christmas story and listen to them sing up there. And it's truly just Christmas magic. Yes, right there."
I soon get to meet Tamra's mom, Phyllis West, and Phyllis’s niece, Twila Hollis.
All three are from Ash Grove, from the same family. They have their favorite spots set up with camp chairs well before showtime. They come to every Adoration Parade, unless the sleet gets really bad.
Here’s a bit of my conversation with Twila. I ask how many years her extended family has made the journey from Ash Grove to Branson for the Adoration Parade.
"Oh I've been coming since I was a child, so the late '70s, the mid-'70s, probably."
I ask, "And if you had to just — what's the core memory, a childhood memory or something that brings you back every time, for unlocking a core memory. What might that be?"
"Just the family atmosphere," Twila says. "The family and the faith-based atmostphere."
Twila tears up. I'd just met her moments before, so I was a bit surprised.
"Your emotions are really clear here," I manage to say. "Help me understand them?"
Twila replies, "This was just a tradition that we always did with our mother. And she passed away last December. And we would always come here, and just the joyfulness of the firefighters bringing out, as a child, the handfuls of candy. That they would just put in your hands, and the joy they would share. And then just watching your family and the band. Yeah. Just the traditions."
"What was your Mom's name?" I ask."
"Hazel. Hazel Taylor."
I later found Hazel's obituary. She passed away at age 90, just a few days before Christmas last year.
Her legacies include her family and their faithful observation of Christmas, in part by driving year after year, to a Nativity scene with a parade, located two counties over.
'Being able to have a faith that you feel strongly about'
I can remember the Adoration Scene from my parents’ window, and I can remember attending the Adoration Parade as a kid, and I was moved hearing Hazel Taylor's story from Twila Hollis and Tamra White.
The Adoration Parade also has a distinctive cultural context in Ozarks society. Several days before this year's event, I checked in with one of Branson's former mayors, Edd Akers.
Akers is of the same generation as my parents, in other words, people born around the same time as the Adoration Scene first went up on the Mount Branson bluffs overlooking Branson Landing and historic downtown.
I tell Akers I'm curious for his views on Branson culture, in light of Adoration Parade traditions. Branson is very oriented toward a particular vision of Christianity and patriotism, and for the townsfolk, the Adoration seems like one of the highest expressions of those ideals.
Akers said that he sees Branson as "almost a refuge for people to get away and bring families and come down and spend time. And it goes back to the 1900s. People were coming down here because of the book Shepherd of the Hills.
"After 1907, the book went out. People started coming down here, but the tourism would come into the area, and they would get a feeling of peace, that they would come here and just be able to relax, and the world out there is crazy."
Akers adds, "That's what we offer, I think, as a community. The very patriotic community that we have honors veterans, and it has done that for years, and that's an important part of recognizing that we have a freedom that is at a price.
"And the veterans paid that price, the ones that, particularly that lost their lives, gave it all and and so the appreciation this community has for the people who recognize that we have a freedom because of them is important, and then being able to have a faith that you feel strongly about and are able to express. I go to, you know, restaurants and so on in town, and we, we stop to pray before the meal. And I see other people around us doing the same things. They come here and recognize that that this area is something special."
You can see it by looking around at destination attractions and big community events: Branson and its tourism base are both markedly more demographically diverse than they were during my early-80s childhood. Back when I formed that memory of the shining Adoration scene viewed from my parents’ window.
Since the Adoration Scene first rose up almost eight decades ago, in spite of changes, or perhaps in part because of them, Branson continues to pride itself on centering Christianity in its celebrations, with traditional ideas about family values, American patriotism and coming home to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
