Cookeville Will Organize Christmas Parade

Cookeville City Council passed a resolution Thursday night that the city will organize this year’s Christmas Parade.

Mayor Laurin Wheaton said many specifics remain up in the air and this plan only stands for this year right now. Wheaton said the current plan is for the council to organize a committee that will bring together the parade.

“We wanted to make sure there was a Christmas Parade,” Wheaton said. “We know that there has, to be honest, been some controversy of how it was going to move forward. And at the end of the day, I think this council, we wanted a Christmas Parade. We want something for the community. And so we have come together…we are hopeful that we can come together as a community and do a family-friendly Christmas parade for our community and for our kids.”

Cookeville’s Christmas Parade has been in doubt since last week when a group of local churches issued the application for this year’s parade. The churches took over the parade when the Cookeville Putnam County Chamber of Commerce declined to organize the event this year. The application included faith-based rules concerning issues like marriage, homosexuality, faith and abortion. Such rules would have made it impossible for public school groups, for example, to participate.

City and county officials met with the church leaders earlier this week to discuss a way forward. Another meeting is scheduled for Friday. It is not clear whether that meeting will go forward or if the churches will remove their application for a street closure for their parade.

“This is a lot of working parts here, but we’re gonna see what we can do and hopefully save Christmas,” Wheaton said.