Football game postpones Jackson Christmas parade

There are only two things that could keep the Jackson Christmas Parade from happening on schedule Saturday night — bad weather and a Missouri Class 5 championship football game.

Weather won’t be an issue. As of Monday afternoon, Jackson’s forecast for Saturday night was calling for mostly clear skies with only a 10% chance of rain.

The undefeated Jackson High School Indians (13-0), however, are scheduled to play Carthage High School (11-2) at Faurot Field on the University of Missouri campus at 7 p.m. Saturday in Columbia for the MSHSAA state title.

Therefore, a decision was made to postpone the Jackson Christmas parade 24 hours until Sunday evening. The parade postponement was announced Monday by the Uptown Jackson Revitalization Organization, which sponsors the event.

“The Jackson High School band and a lot of other people who were scheduled to be involved in the parade are also going to be at the football game, so we thought it was best to move the parade,” said Uptown Jackson executive director Steve Turner.

“We sort of penciled it in for Sunday when we knew the playoff schedule and realized the championship game would be Saturday,” he said. The decision to delay the parade until Sunday was made shortly after the Indians defeated Staley High School in the state semifinal game in Kansas City over the weekend, thereby qualifying for the championship game Saturday night.

“People have been asking for a while now if we were going to move the parade to avoid the football game, but we didn’t want to say ‘yes’ and jinx it,” Turner said.

Delaying the Christmas parade until Sunday evening will allow the Jackson High School band to perform at the game Saturday night as well as the parade Sunday. It will also allow football fans and parade enthusiasts to attend both events, Turner said.

“So far, we’ve only had one parade unit that’s had to cancel their parade appearance because of the postponement, so it looks like everything will go on as scheduled, just pushed back one day,” he said.

The parade will start around dusk, or approximately 5 p.m., Sunday and will begin at Southern Bank on West Main Street, proceed to High Street and end at Adams Street in uptown Jackson.

“Not counting the bands, firetrucks and police cars, we’ll have more than 50 units in the parade,” said Turner, who also noted several uptown merchants along the parade route will be open from 4 until 8 p.m. Sunday. Santa will visit with children at the gazebo next to the Cape Girardeau County Courthouse immediately after the parade and Jackson Middle School carolers will perform before and after the parade.

Jackson School District director of communications Merideth Pobst said the district was happy to work with Uptown Jackson to reschedule the parade.

“You know you’re living in a small town when a community’s Christmas parade is postponed for the sake of a football game,” she said. “That’s Jackson pride for you!”

As for Sunday’s weather forecast, Turner admitted it might not be as nice as it would have been Saturday. As of Monday afternoon, forecasters were calling for a 40% chance of rain Sunday night.

“We’ll just keep our fingers crossed with regard to the weather,” Turner said.