50 Years of Christmas in Cashiers: The Parade That Became a Tradition

Before there were 50 years of Christmas parades in Cashiers, there was Sandie Smith and an idea.

On December 22, 1974, Smith brought the first Cashiers Christmas Peppermint Stick Parade to life.

It wasn't an elaborate production created by some distant event company. It was Cashiers.

There were horses and fire trucks. Homemade floats and local businesses. Children marching down the road while neighbors stood along the sidelines. Frank Smith Realty was there. So were members of families whose names remain familiar in Cashiers today.

And near the front were three young girls — Sandie's daughters, Nicolle, Lisa and Jennifer Smith — leading the High Steppers & Drum Brigade.

Fifty years later, one of those girls would lead the parade again.

Following in Her Mother's Footsteps

For the 50th Cashiers Christmas Peppermint Stick Parade on December 7, 2024, the Cashiers Area Chamber of Commerce honored founder Sandie Smith by naming her daughter, Nicolle “Nikki” Smith Russell, Grand Marshal.

Nikki grew up in Cashiers, where her father, Frank Smith Jr., owned Frank Smith Realty, and she remembers that first parade as a day when it seemed nearly everyone in town was either participating or standing along the road cheering.

She remembers something else.

It was cold.

Very cold.

Young Nikki was crying, so her father made her an offer: if she could just make it to the Community Center, he'd buy her a pony.

Nikki made it.

Fifty years later, she reported that the pony had yet to arrive.

Some Christmas traditions endure longer than promises.

But the tradition her mother started certainly endured.

The Cashiers of 1974 Was Still in the Parade

Perhaps the most remarkable part of celebrating 50 years was discovering how many threads still connected that first parade to the one taking place half a century later.

Nikki wasn't the only person in the 2024 procession with memories reaching back to 1974.

Cashiers-Glenville Volunteer Fire Department Chief Randy Dillard and his cousin, Jackson County Emergency Management Director Todd Dillard, also participated in that first parade.

That makes what happened the following Christmas even more meaningful: in 2025, Randy Dillard would be named Grand Marshal of the 51st Cashiers Christmas Parade, moving from a participant in the original parade to the person leading it more than half a century later.

That's the sort of history you can't manufacture.

It simply takes 50 years to happen.

69 Entries for 50 Years

The milestone parade wasn't small.

The official parade program listed 69 positions in the procession, beginning with the Jackson County Sheriff's Office and including the Rosman High School Tiger Band, Grand Marshal Nikki Smith Russell, local businesses, nonprofits, schools, public-safety organizations, animals, antique vehicles, community award recipients and, naturally, Santa himself aboard a ladder truck.

The award-winning Rosman Tiger Band helped provide the soundtrack, while Mr. and Mrs. Claus continued another beloved part of the celebration. The program recorded that Cashiers' Santa had been wearing the red suit for more than a decade and Mrs. Claus for 13 years — volunteers who had made spreading Christmas cheer part of their own tradition.

The parade also carried some of the people recognized through the Chamber's Spirit of Our Community Awards, including Citizen of the Year Harriet Karro, Educator of the Year Kurt Pusch of Summit Charter School, Volunteer of the Year Chris Jefferson, Arts & Culture Advocate Danie Beck, and Evergreen Award recipients Paul Robshaw and Vision Cashiers.

In other words, this wasn't simply a Christmas procession.

It was a pretty good snapshot of Cashiers itself.

The Elves Behind the Magic

A parade doesn't make its way through the crossroads by Christmas magic alone.

The 50th anniversary program named an extraordinary collection of volunteers working behind the scenes — check-in captains, staging captains, parade ushers, banner and pennant carriers, signage volunteers, judges, announcers and Chamber hosts.

Danie Beck marked her eighth year as Parade Starter. Drew English and Sarah Jennings returned for their second year as parade announcers. Sean Cronin, Jill Katz and Serenity Richards served their third year as judges. And dozens of other volunteers took on jobs ranging from staging entries to carrying banners and getting everyone where they belonged.

The job titles in the program may have included a little Christmas license — Chief Elf Wrangler, Lieutenant Elf, Parade Gatekeeper and Tooth Fairies among them — but the work behind them was quite real.

That's another reason a community tradition survives for 50 years.

Someone always agrees to carry the banner.

Someone directs traffic.

Someone announces the next float.

Someone puts on the Santa suit.

And somebody has to wrangle the elves.

Watch the 50th Cashiers Christmas Parade

Relive the 50th Cashiers Christmas Peppermint Stick Parade and the community celebration that carried Sandie Smith's 1974 tradition into its next half-century.

A Milestone That Meant More in 2024

There was another layer to the 50th celebration.

The parade came only months after Hurricane Helene devastated communities across Western North Carolina. In the program, the Chamber acknowledged both the community's resilience and the neighbors elsewhere in the mountains who were still recovering, promising not to forget them.

So gathering at the crossroads that December wasn't only nostalgic.

It was an affirmation.

Cashiers was celebrating something that had survived five decades because generations of people kept choosing to come together.

What Sandie Smith Really Started

A parade can be organized in a year.

A tradition cannot.

Someone can choose a date, plan a route and invite everybody to come.

But a tradition only becomes a tradition when people decide to return.

For 50 years, Cashiers did.

Children who once marched eventually brought their own children. Businesses built floats. Churches and nonprofits joined the procession. Musicians played. Volunteers worked behind the scenes. Firefighters, rescue personnel and law enforcement officers kept everyone safe.

And every December, people found their way back to the crossroads.

Nikki wrote about hoping her own children would someday tell the story of where the Cashiers Christmas Peppermint Stick Parade began.

They can.

Because Sandie Smith didn't simply organize a parade on December 22, 1974.

She gave Cashiers a Christmas tradition.

Fifty years later, we're still marching.

And Nikki?

We're still waiting on that pony.