Christmas On The Water

Biloxi’s annual boat parade offers a particularly Mississippi kind of Christmas

- Boyce Upholt

Last year, when I arrived on the Mississippi Coast on the first day in December, I remembered why winter is my favorite time of the year to be on the beach. Sure, the air was hazy—the edges of the harbor in Gulfport were disappearing into the mist—and the breeze off the water carried a brisk, cutting chill. But the beach itself, which would have been crawling with people in the summertime, was mostly empty, open for a wonderfully lonely stroll.

And it was a grand day: just warm enough for diners to cluster on the restaurant patios that overlook the sea, breezy enough for young men in wetsuits who were riding kiteboards, sunny enough for an older man to be leaned back, arms crossed behind his head, just taking in the sound of the crashing waves. As I drove on toward my destination in Biloxi, I rolled down my windows and turned up the radio. Which—as the chiming notes of Vince Guaraldi’s Peanuts soundtrack came on—became about the only evidence that it was Christmas season at all, besides the occasional pick-up truck with a pine tree in its bed.

Then night fell. The coast lit up: boats drifting across the harbor sparkled in red, white, and green lights. The season, despite the balmy temperature, could not have been more clear.

I was here for a particularly Mississippian kind of Christmas performance: a parade of boats that, draped in lights and seasonal decorations, proceed across the black nighttime waters of Biloxi Bay.