News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The 2018 Cookeville-Putnam County Christmas Parade has changed its theme due to copyright issues.
County Executive Randy Porter said the parade will no longer be using ‘A Whoville Christmas’ after Dr. Seuss Enterprises “politely refused” to grant use of their trademarks.
“When you start looking at all the media that we do, it’s going to be live streamed on Facebook, YouTube, and TV,” Porter said. “I think it has a lot to do with the Grinch movie coming out and they did not want to give us the OK to go ahead with it.”
The new theme of ‘A Cookeville Storybook Christmas’ will take the place of ‘A Whoville Christmas’. Porter said parade organizers wanted to keep the theme oriented towards children despite not being able to use the Dr. Seuss theme.
“You think back as a child about all the storybook characters and everything that you read about and had books on, that’s where we’re heading with that,” Porter said. “The people putting floats in the parade have a lot to choose from. They can pick their favorite storybook characters and dress up or decorate their floats like that.”
Porter said the parade organizers tried to announce the change early enough in case any parade entries thought about preparing decorations soon.
“We hate if there’s anybody that has already started and we apologize for that,” Porter said. “With us about five weeks out from the parade, we felt like we got it changed in time and hopefully everyone has plenty of time to do their floats and decorations and not cause any major problems.”
Despite the theme change, Porter is looking forward to the parade this year after a successful celebration in 2017.
“We’re looking forward to a great parade. We had a great one last year when we celebrated Putnam County and the 175th anniversary,” Porter said. “We hope we can build on that and that everyone will come out, do entries, floats, bands, whatever the entry may be. We’re giving away over $3,000 in prizes and we think it will be a great parade this year and hope everyone will come out and join us.”
Algood City Manager Keith Morrison said the city will also select a new theme after they too were planning on using the Grinch theme for their parade. Morrison added a new theme for the Algood Christmas parade will likely be released Friday.
Parade organizers request that participants not dress as or decorate their floats with anything relating to Dr. Seuss or ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’. The parade is still scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 8 beginning at 6 p.m.
Those who are interested in signing-up for the parade can contact the Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce.
