Can Minneapolis become the ‘most beautiful Christmas city in America’ again?

The return of Holidazzle is a reprise of a tradition that stretches back a long, long time. But is it Holidazzle without a parade?

The bright floats that traversed the Nicollet Mall every year from 1992 to 2013 were the signature elements of the event, and without them, some would say this year’s revived Holidazzle, stretching from 6th Street to Peavey Plaza at Nicollet Mall from Wednesday through Dec. 22, is just a winter festival. (The event was canceled in 2020 and 2023.) But it’s certainly better than a cold and gloomy downtown, and it connects to a history of downtown celebration that stretches back longer than a century.

In the 1920s, downtown Christmas lights ran from Washington Avenue to 10th Street, creating a corridor of boughs and bulbs that invited shoppers to head downtown at night, shop, see a movie and take a meal. They turned them on all at once — and a dark city sprang to life. In 1926, the Minneapolis Journal said 200,000 people — half the city’s population — thronged downtown to see the lights:

“There was the click of a light switch in downtown Minneapolis Wednesday evening and the loop district became once more a Christmas fairyland of warm bright colors — the effect of several thousand electric light bulbs interwoven in a mile-long canopy of evergreens.

“The click of the switch was both an announcement and a challenge. It proclaimed, in no uncertain terms, that the Christmas holiday season is at hand, and it bespoke the desire of Minneapolis to once more gain the title of the ‘most beautiful Christmas city’ in America.”

Typical boosterism, perhaps. But the boosters — from the newspaper writers to the mayor — were serious. In 1927, Minneapolis challenged 10 other cities across the country to prove it was brighter, merrier and had more Christmas glory. It was an odd group of cities, however — Denver, Kansas City, Detroit, Buffalo, N.Y., Davenport, Iowa, Duluth, La Crosse, Wis., Pittsburgh, Boston ... and Fargo.

Chicago and New York were somehow left out of the contest.

“Minneapolis is the brightest Christmas city in America,” the challenge asserted. “A downtown district with streets under a canopy of evergreen festoons and thousands of tiny lights twinkling from the streamers. Every downtown lamppost had a Christmas tree against a lighted background of red. A towering municipal Christmas tree in the loop gateway, its branches glittering with the light of thousands of tiny color lights and its top holding a flashing star of Bethlehem 75 feet in the air. Floodlights illuminating the Christmas tree, the arbor and every part of the gateway.”

In 1928, according to the Journal, it was more of the same in downtown Minneapolis: “Loop merchants plan the most extensive decoration program in years. Seventh Street already is bedecked with its evergreen streamers. Lights, thousands of them, are being strung and six carloads of Christmas trees are ready to be placed on the lampposts downtown.”

Other shopping nodes had their own decorations, and Uptown would have hidden speakers in the evergreen boughs to play holiday music.

The Journal reported on outstate enthusiasm in 1926, cranking up the nonspecific cliche machine: “Myriads of vari-colored lights, fragrant evergreen festoons, stately Christmas trees and brilliant shop windows have transformed Minnesota into a Christmas land. Two weeks before Christmas, a survey finds nearly every town, village and hamlet in the state making some special plans for Christmas.” It was no doubt a less than comprehensive survey. But also was probably true.

From the 1930s to the ‘60s, newspapers dutifully ran a piece about the lights, but the shameless boosterism was replaced by rote notices that the lights were on. In the early ‘70s, stores abandoned the lights to conserve energy. Dayton’s department store even cut the holiday lights inside the store in 1973. Downtown’s appeal would wane as shopping habits changed, and it would take Holidazzle, which started in 1992 and moved to Loring Park in 2014, to bring pageantry back to Nicollet Mall.

It’s not the same as it was in the days when downtown was the primary retail destination, because there won’t be department store windows stuffed with merchandise. You can’t get a kid to go downtown to see the toy trains and sleds, because there are few shop windows left on Nicollet.

It doesn’t mean downtown is doomed — it’ll just be different. We had the enormous tree and lights for a while; then we had the parade; now we have the Peavey Park Holidazzle. It’s fine.

Minneapolis may not be the most beautiful Christmas downtown in the country anymore. But nothing says it can’t be again.