The Christmas parade made of glowing tractors

Most towns light up a tree at Christmas. Sandusky lights up a combine. On a Saturday night in early December, the county seat of the Thumb’s farm country runs its Country Christmas Lighted Farm Implement Parade — a procession of tractors, grain wagons, balers, and full-size harvesters wrapped bumper to blade in Christmas lights, rolling down the dark Main Street while everybody watches from the curb in their coats. It is exactly as wonderful and as strange as it sounds.

The thing has been going for more than three decades now, and it grew straight out of what this place actually is. Sandusky sits in the dead center of Sanilac County, which is some of the best farmland in Michigan — beans, sugar beets, corn, dairy. So when the town wanted a Christmas tradition of its own, it didn’t borrow somebody else’s. It decorated the machines that the whole county’s livelihood runs on and drove them through the middle of town. A glowing planter the size of a small house is a genuinely odd Christmas sight, and that’s the charm.

There’s a whole weekend built around it — a tree lighting on the courthouse lawn, where the 1916 brick courthouse makes a good backdrop, Santa, crafts for the kids at the downtown shops. But the parade is the heart of it, and the heart of the parade is the simple fact that out here, the farm equipment isn’t a novelty act. It’s the real economy, dressed up once a year in lights and sent down the street to say Merry Christmas. Bring a warm coat; December in the Thumb does not mess around.