JP and Sherrie Parsons are carrying on JP’s mom’s holiday lights tradition by winning this year’s Light Up Stratford competition in the Avon ward.
A Stratford mother’s dying wish encouraging her son to carry on her tradition of having one of the city’s best holiday lights displays was honored with a win in this year’s Light Up Stratford holiday lights competition.
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JP and Sherrie Parsons were named the winners in Stratford’s Avon Ward for their impressive outdoor Christmas lights display at their home on Cody Drive. The win came nearly two years after the death of JP’s mom, Nancy Parsons, a repeat winner and runner up several times throughout the city’s annual Light Up contest who was known for her love and dedication to making her home shine during the holiday season.
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“She’s done it ever since I can remember,” Sherrie Parsons said. “I’ve known JP for 30 years, and she’s always done it.”
Awarded by the city’s civic beautification and environmental awareness advisory committee, the Light Up Stratford contest recognizes the best of Stratford’s home and business holiday lights displays each year.
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“She always set up a huge display at 42 Brydges St., and she actually won the award a couple times herself, and then she was always runner up because they never give it to you two times in a row,” said JP Parsons. “She was doing it herself for a bit and then I started helping her out because she started getting way too many lights.”
Ultimately, Nancy Parsons accumulated so many different lights her electrician son had to help her arrange how to plug them all in without blowing a fuse. Each year, JP was up on a ladder helping his mother tape the lights in place and set up the lawn display before Dec. 1.
“Her hydro bill was massive at Christmas,” Sherrie Parsons said with a laugh.
Just before his mom passed, JP said she asked him to take her collection of lights and continue the tradition at his own home. While the Parsons have replaced some of Nancy’s older lights with newer, brighter ones, her dying wish was one they both took to heart and will continue honoring every December.
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“She goes, ‘I know you don’t want to keep all of it, but don’t throw it all out.’ …I just thought I’d keep it going and then my friend would always help me out over the last few years and we kind of made it a tradition,” JP said.
That tradition, Sherrie Parsons noted, had become “a whole day now.”
“There’s a lot of drinks,” she said. “It’s a special day and we’d have a party that night. It’s a day where we remember her and how much she loved Christmas. We also have her Christmas tree, and she had five or six bins full of decorations, so my daughter and I are inside putting the tree up and all the decorations while JP is out doing the outside stuff with his buddy.”
Having now taken home a win in the Light Up Stratford contest, just like his mom, JP and Sherrie both know Nancy would be proud of their efforts, not only to light up their house at Christmas but in keeping her spirit and love of the holidays and her family alive.
This year’s Light Up Stratford competition winners are:
- Avon Ward – 31 Cody St.;
- Falstaff Ward – 312 Cobourg St.;
- Hamlet Ward – 202 John St.;
- Romeo Ward – 38 Morgan St.;
- Shakespeare Ward – 238 Louise St.;
- Commercial/industrial/business – Orr Insurance (50 Cobourg St.)
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