Who Pays for Exeter's Holiday Season?
November 5, 2026
November 5, 2026
On Dec. 10, 1948, Exeter held its first Santa Claus Parade. Local merchants and the Exeter Chamber of Commerce paid for it. School bands, the fire department and church groups marched through downtown, and at the end came Santa on a flatbed truck carrying a white igloo. The parade ran again in 1949. The next year it did not run. The grand marshal, Lyman Collishaw, explained why in a letter to the Exeter News-Letter, which Seacoastonline's look back at the parade's history reprinted:
"These parades in the past were paid for by businessmen and civic-minded citizens. This year we did not have the courage to again solicit for this feature."
The Chamber held a smaller tree lighting that year, and the full parade did not come back until 1957. The 2026 Exeter Holiday Parade steps off on Saturday, Dec. 5. The money behind it, and behind most of Exeter's holiday events, is being raised now through dinners, craft purchases and auction bids in the weeks before the floats line up.
The Exeter Holiday Parade Committee is all volunteers. In its October announcement, reported by Exeter Patch, the committee named three fundraisers for this year. The first was Oct. 22 at Thirsty Moose Taphouse on Portsmouth Avenue, where the restaurant gave 10 percent of evening sales to the parade.
Two are still ahead:
The craft fair shows the model most clearly. Admission is free, and the committee says the vendor fees help pay for the parade. Crafters pay for a table, shoppers walk in at no charge, and the money goes to the parade a week later. The 1948 version worked much the same way, with downtown commerce paying for a holiday event downtown. Today the payments come in smaller amounts from more people.
Anyone who wants to give more directly can reach the committee at [email protected] about sponsorships, donations, volunteering or marching in the parade.
The shopping season the first parade was built around starts again on Water Street this evening. Enjoy Exeter is a first-Thursday-of-the-month evening when participating downtown businesses stay open until 7 p.m. Tonight, Nov. 5, it runs from 5 to 7 p.m., and Visit NH's event listing shows it as free. The Patch calendar listing names these participants:
Tonight's late hours are a separate event from the parade fundraisers. Both depend on the same habit, though: people shopping downtown in November. Three weeks from now, on Small Business Saturday, that habit pays for the parade through the craft fair.
The town's other big holiday event pays for something beyond itself. The 28th annual Festival of Trees fills Exeter Town Hall on Wednesday, Dec. 2, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Thursday, Dec. 3, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. It is free and open to the public. Live decorated trees go to silent auction, a bake sale runs alongside, and raffle tickets are sold for a committee tree filled with gift cards from local businesses.
Every dollar has a single destination. Proceeds go to the Community Children's Fund, which gives warm winter clothing vouchers to children across the Seacoast. According to the fund, it works with social service agencies to get the vouchers to families, and the vouchers work like gift certificates at participating merchants for children's clothing, outerwear or bedding. Seacoastonline's report on the 2025 festival gave the 2025 voucher amounts as $150 for children and $180 for teens, usable at local stores. Social service agencies and school nurses identified the recipients, who came from 12 towns.
That same report broke down where the 2025 money came from. As of Dec. 17, 2025, the festival had raised nearly $50,000, with donations still coming in.
| 2025 Festival of Trees source | What it brought in |
|---|---|
| Online silent auction of 52 decorated trees | $16,690 |
| Raffle tree ticket sales | $6,540, a record |
| Cookie Room sales | More than $1,000 |
| Decorator registration fees, underwriter donations, tree delivery fees, general donations | The remainder of the nearly $50,000 total |
The trees, the most visible part of the festival, brought in about a third of last year's total. The auction, raffle and Cookie Room together came to roughly $24,000, about half. The other half came from businesses and individuals who paid to take part, underwrote the event or simply gave. Decorators also supply all of their own decorations as part of their contribution, as co-founder Jan Russell told Seacoastonline. Last year's entries included a "12 Days of Christmas" tree from Phillips Exeter Academy employees, a Lexie's tree topped with a French fry, and a Samuel Adams-themed tree from Bayside Distributing.
The fund's spending in 2025 shows how much it relies on giving beyond a single event. The Community Children's Fund supported 803 children that year, with $128,310 in vouchers and another $13,000 to school nurses for unmet student needs. The festival's nearly $50,000 was a large share of that, but not all of it.
For 2026, the organizer's page shows all 50 tree decorating slots reserved by Sept. 29. Ten sponsors are listed at the $1,000 level: Piper's Property, Needham Bank, Panacea Products, Ace Hardware, Exeter Hospital, Chinburg Properties, Graham Tire & Auto, Edward Jones' Mathew Ward & Kylee Murtagh, D.F. Richard Energy, and Service Credit Union. Nine more sponsors are listed at $500. Some winning bidders don't take their trees home. In recent years the St. Vincent de Paul Food Pantry has placed those trees with local families, co-founder Bonnie Galinski told Seacoastonline.
The block party on Dec. 3 brings the fundraisers together. The Exeter Holiday Block Party is on Thursday, Dec. 3, at Town House Common Park on Court Street. The parade committee's inflatables return, Santa visits, and the Festival of Trees is open next door until 8 p.m. that night. The same inflatables appear at the committee's fundraisers, so anyone who saw them at Thirsty Moose or will see them at Otto has already seen the parade raising money for itself.
Two days later comes the parade. Details from the committee, as reported by Exeter Patch:
Exeter has held its parade at night since 1994, which made it one of the few parades held in the dark. Bands put twinkling lights on their instruments and music holders. For more than 20 years it also had Francis Wentworth, founder of Wentworth Lumber Company and a driving force behind the parade. In 1993 the Chamber named him Citizen of the Year, and he managed to be in the parade twice, leading it as grand marshal and closing it as Santa.
The committee calls the parade a tradition of more than 60 years. It has not run every year since 1948. It skipped 1950 when organizers did not ask for the money, it was rained out in 1959, and it barely appears in the record through most of the 1960s before returning as an annual event in the 1970s. This year's version depends on the slice of pizza on Nov. 16, the table fees on Nov. 28 and the volunteers who keep asking.
At Caren Logan Luxury Homes, we pay attention to the shops, volunteers and traditions that make a town feel like home. If parade night gets you thinking about your own place in Exeter, or about a home within walking distance of Water Street, Caren would be glad to talk it through. Let's Connect.
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