How did the Padanaram Holiday Stroll begin? A look down memory lane

Forty-seven years ago, four women had an idea to start a Friday night shopping evening for Padanaram’s retailers as a gentlemen’s night out, but now the event is better known as the Padanaram Holiday Stroll.

At the time, retailers simply put lights in their windows and gave wine and crackers. Now, there are approximately half a million lights illuminating the village, ice sculpting, a visit from Santa Claus, cookie decorating and more.

“It’s just grown and grown and grown,” said Linda Hopps, one of the event’s founders. “It was little, people just putting lights in their windows from the inside.”

With most buildings along Elm Street and some others on Bridge Street leading toward the bridge now lit, Hopps said that "when you look around the holidays, it looks like a Hallmark movie.”

“It’s funny because I feel like it’s my baby, and I don’t want anything bad to happen to it,” she said, “And I get very emotional about it.”

The stroll has ebbed and flowed in popularity over the years, picking up in 2012 after Tom Quann and Hopps strung lights on their buildings in 2011 and others took notice.

The Padanaram Holiday Stroll is organized and funded by the Padanaram Business Association, which pays for all the lights, trash cans from the Department of Public Works, and to have police guide traffic.

“People don’t realize how much really goes into the logistics behind it,” said Quann, founder and president of Stonegate Mortgage and one of the event’s organizers.

He said, “Think of the vision that those ladies had to have had 47 years ago to stick with it. Not give up on it, and keep adding to it and being persistent.”

Quann moved to the village in 2010 and was renting from Hopps, who at the time asked if he could leave Stonegate Mortgage open and have cookies or other treats out for the Padanaram Stroll.

That year, there were an estimated 75 to 100 people at the event, and the next day Hopps had asked Quann what he thought of the stroll.

“It was pretty cool, but it was like morbid. It was dark,” Quann recalled. “It needed to be a little bit brighter.”

“I said, ‘Would you mind if I put some lights on the building?’” Quann had asked, to which Hopps agreed.

In 2011, Quann’s building and the Milbury and Company Real Estate building were the first two lit, as well as a parking lot.

“A couple friends of mine, a family member, they helped us out with just putting a couple lights on … and that was it,” Quann said.

Then, in 2012, elves came to town to help with the growing demand. 

“I thought it would be cute to see [Santa’s] little helpers [stringing the lights],” Quann said. “From that point on, it just got more involved and more involved.”

From then on, the stroll has only grown.

“Just this year alone I had to buy another like 52,000 [lights], and I’m probably going to go grab a bunch more,” Quann said. “It’ll be about 60,000 lights, just buying new ones.”

He said, “Now it’s literally we’re lighting up the entire village.”

About 30 to 35 contractors come to the village to string the lights, all dressed in identical elf costumes.

“These guys love it. They absolutely love it because now the elves down here have become a big thing,” Quann said. “When they come down for a weekend … it’s a big deal.”

Cars will honk their horns as they drive by and people will ask if the contractors could get off their ladders and take pictures.

Hopps pointed out one instance when an elf was helping her locate a light switch and passersby were excited to see him.

“We’re walking up the street and people are tooting at him and waving, and he’s like, ‘What are these people doing?’ I said, ‘They love you guys. You got to wave back,’” she said.

The Padanaram elves are even known across the country.

“I had people call me from Colorado, ‘When are the elves coming to light the village,’ and they want to be here and they want to come through the village and see the elves in all these beautiful costumes,” Hopps said.

Quann said that last year the group did a “major upgrade” because he didn’t have enough costumes for the number of elves participating.

Hopps called the stroll a “wonderful community event.”

“It’s a lot of involvement, and we even have people that live there that come up and say, ‘How can we get involved? How can we donate? How can we help you?’” she said.

This year, people in the community have been asking for ways to participate, including a group of Christmas carolers and the school department choral group.

“We’re becoming the hunted as opposed to the hunters,” Quann said.

He added, “That’s how you know you get something special is when that happens. People want to be part of it.”