Carols, emergency lights brighten Christmas Eve
Peachland fire department will be spreading Christmas cheer in the town tonight
If Santa happens to get lost on his way to Peachland tonight, he can just follow the fire trucks.
The town’s six-truck fleet will once again be deployed Thursday on virtually every street in the town of 5,500 people. Draped in Christmas lights, the vehicles’ emergency lights will also be flashing but instead of sirens, Christmas carols will ring out from the trucks.
Families can gather outside or on their decks to await the trucks’ arrival on their street, continuing a colourful and musical Christmas Eve tradition that dates back to 1974.
“Back then, we had one truck and I just decided to take it out on Christmas Eve to spread a little Christmas cheer,” Don Wilson, then the town’s fire chief said Wednesday.
“I turned on the lights and broadcast some Christmas carols I had on a tape recorder through the truck’s speakers,” Wilson recalled. “It was something different and people seemed to like it. And it’s carried on every Christmas since then.”
Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, current chief Dennis Craig says the Christmas Eve tour will take place tonight. But unlike in past years, the volunteer firefighters who ride along on the trucks won’t be giving out candy canes. Families are asked not to approach the trucks, but rather to just wave as the procession rolls by.
In past years, the drive-by has occasionally been interrupted by a call-out. But Wilson, who was the town’s fire chief and sole paid employee from 1980 to 2004, earning $800 a month when he retired, says the night is usually one of the quietest of the year in terms of emergency calls.
More common are glitches like one year when the town’s United Church politely asked the fire department to delay the start of the parade because the carols were somehow being channelled by the electric organ and interfering with the solemnity of the Christmas Eve service.
And Wilson says some years, drivers got lost and returned to the hall very late.
“That’s what they said, anyway. Who knows? Maybe they stopped somewhere for a drink,” he said. “Of course that would never happen now.”
Now 82, Wilson runs the town museum and serves as Peachland’s unofficial historian. “His contributions to this community are invaluable,” says Cheryl Wiebe, the town’s community service director.
As he has every year since he started the Christmas Eve fire truck tour, Wilson will again be involved tonight. He still provides the soundtrack to the event, though in a more high-tech way.
“I go to the firehall and play the music that’s broadcast over the radio to all the trucks as they drive around town,” he said. “Big Christmas carols, with lots of orchestral music, they don’t sound very good from the trucks. So I like to keep the songs simple, with lots of bells.”