Trees and boats lit for the holidays

With last Saturday’s triple holiday lightings of Christmas trees, Hanukkah menorahs and Kwanzaa kinaras, followed by the annual Nautical Mile of Lights Boat Parade, opportunities to kick off the holiday season reached from the north to the south of the Village of Freeport.

“Whose child’s birthday is close to tonight?” called Mayor Robert Kennedy into a gathering of families on the Sunrise Highway triangle between Church and Main streets. At 5  p..m., dark had fully fallen and Santa had arrived on a fire truck. Deputy Mayor Ron Ellerbe, Trustees Evette Sanchez and Chris Squeri, Police Chief Michael Smith, and Fire Department Executive Director Ray Maguire struck up conversations with parents and children.

“OK,” said Kennedy when a small boy came forward, “OK, all you kids are going to help. You” — indicating the boy — “you’re going to throw the switch.”

He guided the little boy’s hand to a large switch on a

short pole and said, “One – two – three!” The switch dropped and the ample branches of the thick evergreen “electric tree” came alive with soft purple lights.

Next, the flame-shaped bulbs of the Kwanzaa kinara and the Hanukkah menorah were set blazing, while one nearby sign proclaimed the seven values of Kwanzaa (unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith) and another displayed the holy words of the Hanukkah event: “Nes Gadol Hayah Sham – A great miracle happened there.”

Santa posed for pictures with giggling youngsters while firefighters and police officers relaxed watchfully, chatting with villagers.

The whole scenario repeated itself on the lawn of the Freeport Recreation Center at 6 p.m. Then the team of village officials and workers trooped down to Woodcleft Avenue, where they joined a happy, milling crowd that had gathered on the Esplanade.

A perfectly cone-shaped 30-foot Christmas tree towered over the Esplanade. Between its unlit shape and the metal statue of leaping dolphins, the performers of Freeport’s own youth theater group, Sparkle On Stage, surrounded their director, Robyn Workman, leading

the throng through holiday carols. A tall costumed reindeer nodded its wall-eyed head in rhythm with the words.

“That tree is too perfect to be real,” someone muttered.

“I think they got it from Newsday when it closed its Garden City office,” a woman said.

A few minutes later, the village officials led the crowd through one more countdown. The tree and the immense star at its tip flared to life. Santa called families over to the foot of the tree for snapshots and tiny cups of hot chocolate, donated by restaurateur-turned-author Ivan Sayles.

Before long, the crowd gravitated to the railings that overlook Woodcleft Canal along the Nautical Mile. Boats of all sizes moored to the docks glowed with multicolored lights strung along their decks and lines. On an upper deck, an inflated Frosty the Snowman gradually leaned backward in the chill air.

The Holiday Boat Parade, which is sponsored by the Freeport Chamber of Commerce, would soon begin.

“It’s a cool thing,” said a man who was holding his little boy up to see the boats. The man declined to be identified – “just say a Freeport local.”

When a Coast Guard vessel glided authoritatively down the canal, the parade began in earnest. Mickey Mouse grinned over one prow, and on another, Santa Claus loomed from the back of a near-life-sized inflated elephant. Frosty, re-inflated, waved as his boat eased into the lineup. Red candy canes, fabulous icicle ropes, the Grinch leering above glowing green lights, purple dolphins leaping with neon energy, all floated past.

The vast Starstream VIII of the Captain Lou Fleet glissaded by. Merrymakers thronged its purple-and-red-lit decks. Not long after, competing not for size but for noise and brilliance, came a craft holding radiant golden trees and topped by a ring of American flags created by red-white-and-blue lights. A rock beat thumped from its decks and it rippled the waters with a foghorn, evoking shouts from the onlookers.

In all, 30 to 40 boats formed a cavalcade down the canal. Cameras popped and smartphones took videos.

When the last trail of lights vanished toward Jones Bay, the crowd dispersed, many ducking into the bright interiors of Nautical Mile restaurants to warm their stiff fingers, feeling like the holidays had truly begun.