The 66th Waimea Twilight Christmas Parade starts at 6 p.m. on Saturday, December 5, 2026. This year's theme is "Waimea . . . Small Town . . . Big Legacy." The Waimea Community Association, which runs it, says it is the second-oldest parade in Hawaiʻi. The lighted trucks will roll out on schedule, and the night will look a lot like the last few years.
This year's honorees are a little different. The grand marshal pours wine every Friday afternoon, and the cause the parade supports serves dinner every Thursday evening. Both happen every week of the year. For anyone who lives in Waimea, this year's legacy theme points to two weekly routines in town, and you can join either one well before December 5.
A grand marshal who pours on Fridays
The Waimea Community Association came to this year's theme through Kamuela Liquor Store, which turns 80 in 2026. On the parade page, the association traces the family legacy to 1946, when Tetsuro and Yukie Wakayama started it, and says the liquor store ran next to other family businesses, including a service station and a small general store, serving what was then a very small community.
Their son, Alvin Wakayama, runs the store now and is this year's grand marshal. The association says he hosts a wine tasting every Friday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m., and all are invited.
So you don't have to wait for December to meet the grand marshal. There are five Fridays between this post and the parade: November 6, 13, 20 and 27, and December 4. The last one falls the night before the parade and lines up neatly with a concert in town that evening, covered below.
The store already had a place in the parade's history. Big Island Now's coverage of the 2025 parade listed Kamuela Liquor Store among the Waimea businesses people remembered from the early 1960s, when the parade began.
The cause the parade supports serves on Thursdays
This year's parade supports the Community Meal at St. James, which celebrates its 10th anniversary on December 17, 2026. December 17 is a Thursday, the same day the meal serves every week. So the anniversary lands on an ordinary serving night.
According to St. James' Episcopal Church, the meal is served Thursdays from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the tent at the church, 65-1237 Kawaihae Road in Waimea, and all are welcome. The team prepares about 700 meals a week. Roughly half are served in the tent and half are delivered to people who can't come in person, including boxed meals for kūpuna. Dinners include hot main courses, salads, vegetables and desserts, served with live music.
For a sense of scale, that is roughly 700 dinners every week from one church tent and its kitchen volunteers. A parade that draws thousands of spectators for one evening is pointing at an operation that feeds hundreds of people every Thursday.
The church lists several ways to help:
- Volunteer shifts on Thursdays typically run 9 a.m. to noon, noon to 3 p.m., and 3 to 6 p.m. Jobs include chopping vegetables, preparing entrées, slicing bread, bagging cookies, packing meal boxes, directing traffic, serving and cleaning up.
- Home baking counts too. The meal accepts homemade cookies prepared with safe hygiene practices.
- Meal sponsorship is a $750 donation, which, together with donated food, covers a dinner for about 700 people.
Parishioners Tim Bostock and Jeannie Savage chair the ministry, and Sharon Cariaga-Alfonso coordinates it. Contact details for volunteering and sponsoring are on the church's Community Meal page.
How the theme brings everyone else in
The theme reaches past its two honorees. The association invites anyone with a Waimea story to enter the parade. It names longtime families, including Wakayama, Kimura, Lindsey, Purdy, Spencer, Dochin, Okada, Chock, Ryusaki, Uyeda, Sameshima, Bertelmann and Black, and adds that it's sure it has missed many. It also invites anyone who has run a business, farm, ranch, school or program in Waimea for 10, 20 or 30-plus years. Then it opens the door to everyone else:
"Whether you were born and raised here or are a transplant here in Waimea, you have a legacy to share with a parade entry!"
That line comes from the Waimea Community Association's parade page, which also links the 2026 application, rules, liability waiver and a narrative form for each entry. On parade night, volunteer narrators introduce the units as they pass.
The lighted trucks show how an entry can grow into a tradition. Truckers formally joined the parade 28 years ago, and 13 trucks took part that first year. By the 2025 parade, more than 50 lighted trucks rolled from companies including S&R, Bertelmann Inc., West Hawaiʻi Concrete, HPM, Sanborn Trucking and Diamond D Ranch. Waimea trucker Sonny Miranda coordinates the brigade. Organizers call the trucks the parade's "signature," and it started with 13 of them.
The weeks before December 5, laid out
Starting with the day this post goes up, here is how the Thursday meal, the Friday tasting and Waimea's December calendar fit together. Kahilu Theatre is at 67-1186 Lindsey Road in Kamuela.
| Date | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Thursdays, 4:30–6 p.m. | Community Meal | St. James' tent, 65-1237 Kawaihae Road |
| Fridays, 4–6 p.m. | Wine tasting with Alvin Wakayama | Kamuela Liquor Store |
| Sun., Nov. 29, 2 p.m. | Waimea Community Chorus, "Christmas Music in the Movies" | Kahilu Theatre |
| Fri., Dec. 4, 7 p.m. | Blind Boys of Alabama | Kahilu Theatre |
| Sat., Dec. 5, 6 p.m. | 66th Waimea Twilight Christmas Parade | Through Waimea town |
| Thu., Dec. 10, 7 p.m. | "Whose Live Anyway?" | Kahilu Theatre |
| Sun., Dec. 13, 2 p.m. | Kalani Peʻa's Hawaiian Christmas Show | Kahilu Theatre |
| Thu., Dec. 17, 4:30–6 p.m. | Community Meal's 10th anniversary night | St. James' tent |
| Wed., Dec. 23, 2 and 6 p.m. | West Hawaiʻi Dance Theatre, "The Nutcracker Ballet" | Kahilu Theatre |
Friday, December 4 is the one evening where the routines and the season overlap. The tasting wraps up at 6 p.m., and the Blind Boys of Alabama take the Kahilu stage at 7 p.m. If you live in town, you can make it to both with time to spare.
Parade night, based on how 2025 ran
The association hasn't posted the 2026 route or traffic plan yet, so check waimeatown.org/parade as the date gets closer. Last year's details are the best guide for now. Here is how the 2025 parade worked, as reported by Big Island Video News before the event:
- The route. Units left Waimea Park onto Kawaihae Road, then took Lindsey Road to Mamalahoa Highway, Pukalani Road and Ala ʻŌhiʻa Road, and finished at Kalani Schutte Waimea District Park.
- The traffic stop. No cars moved along the route from 5:55 to 7:15 p.m., and there was no west-east or east-west through traffic in Waimea. Emergency vehicles could still respond. Anyone coming up from the coast or heading home across town had to plan around that window.
- The food. Food trucks set up in two zones: the Pukalani Stables frontage parking area and the gravel lot just south of Waimea Elementary and Middle Schools along Ala ʻŌhiʻa Road.
- After the parade. The lighted units stayed parked at Kalani Schutte District Park for viewing. The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope also announced a free Star Party there for after the parade, with stargazing if the weather allowed, plus crafts and refreshments.
Some things are already set for 2026. Spectators are asked to stay on the sidewalk or grass and off the roadway. Open fires, barbecues and hibachis are not allowed because of wildfire risk, and parade units won't throw candy. Organizers ask families to keep a close watch on keiki and to take their trash home. Every narrator station will have trash bags, with a portable toilet nearby. In 2025, more than 100 volunteers helped stage the parade, including 40 narrators at 20 stations along the route.
The parade-day schedule has filled in over the years. In 2025, the same Saturday also had craft fairs at Parker Ranch Center and Waimea Center, a St. James bazaar, a market at Pukalani Stables and a Kahilu performance. None of those have been announced for 2026 yet. If Waimea's Saturday routines have moved around on you lately, our look at where the Waimea Town Market went covers that change.
The week after the parade
When the floats are parked and the lights come down, the season's two honorees go back to their usual schedules. The tasting continues on Friday, December 11. The Thursday after that, December 17, the Community Meal reaches its 10th year at the usual hour, 4:30 p.m., under the tent on Kawaihae Road. If you want to help with that dinner, the shifts start at 9 a.m.
At Kona Pacific Realty, we're glad to see a hometown business and a weekly supper at the center of this year's parade. If you're planning an entry with your family or business, or you want to talk about life in South Kohala from Waimea down to the coast, connect with your local agent. Me ke aloha pumehana.
