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As they have for more than 70 years, members of the Millstone Valley Volunteer Fire Department ushered Santa Claus around East Millstone and neighboring Millstone on December 21 to spread Christmas cheer.
This is the second year that Grinch has accompanied Santa on his tour, which took place in the afternoon and evening.
After the evening run, Santa and Grinch stopped at the Millstone Valley FD firehouse to meet with children.
“All the fire departments in our district do it every year,” said Millstone Valley FD Chief Chris Ziobro. “And I know a lot of other towns do it this weekend or last weekend. And we go around to the neighborhoods, let the kids meet Santa, bring candy canes, and then afterwards they come here to meet at the firehouse, they sit down and meet Santa.”
Ziobro said residents are always waiting for Santa.
“There’s always a lot of families that are there that know we come around and they wait for us,” he said. “We always have a big crowd at every corner. Usually like 10 to 20 people in a corner.”
Department Engineer Kevin Lowry is in charge of the holiday celebrations.
“This is my favorite time of the year so I really enjoy a lot of the Christmas festivities, so I’ve been given the opportunity to kind of take some of it in my hands and you know try and run the show a little bit,” he said. “I was sort of in charge of the Christmas tree lighting that was held in East Millstone a couple weeks ago, and then I also was kind of in charge of the holiday lights parade that we did in Somerville a few weeks ago. And then now this.”
“There were a lot of people out,” he said. “We made sure they could hear us.”
“I really enjoy it,” Lowry said. “I like seeing everyone, seeing the smiles.”
East Millstone resident Barbara Paris said she’s been watching the Santa run since she was a little girl, 70 years ago.
“It wasn’t quite as big of a production as it is now, it’s gotten much bigger and better,” she said. “They used to hand out gigantic oranges. That’s what they gave them, and the candy cane.”
“My grandfather was one of the original people that started it,” she said.
The family tradition extends down to her own son, Stephen, she said.
“And the first time I saw him driving the fire truck, I almost fell over,” she said.
Here are a few scenes from the event:
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