Why Penn Yan's Holiday Parade Gives Out a Best Tractor Award

How many holiday parades ask their entrants to check the height of their self-propelled harvesters before they show up?

Penn Yan's does. It's right there on the 2026 Lights on Wheels registration form, next to a 14-foot height limit and a list of six awards that judges will vote on during the parade. Best Float is on the list, and so is Best Use of Lights. So is Best Tractor.

That one award shows how StarShine has changed. The festival on Main Street has run for 40-plus years. The parade that now closes it started in 2022, belongs to the Penn Yan FFA, and is heading into its fifth run. Since it started, the evening's high point has moved from the vendor booths to the farm equipment.

Forty years of festival, five runs of the parade

StarShine began as a village holiday celebration. The 2022 edition was billed as the 37th annual. It ran from 4 to 7 p.m. on a Saturday, with music, vendors, the crowning of Miss Penn Yan, and Santa and Mrs. Claus arriving. Elf School was held at the Penn Yan Firehouse, hosted by elves from Keuka College, and the Penn Yan Theatre Company held "An evening of Music and Lights" at the Sampson Theatre.

The parade was new that year. FingerLakes1 reported that the Lights on Wheels Parade, organized with the Penn Yan FFA, would kick off the weekend on Friday evening at 6 p.m. on Main Street, the night before the festival. In the beginning it was an opening act on a different night.

The calendar has moved around since then:

2024 was the turning point. The StarShine Committee announced that the festival and the parade would happen together on Saturday, December 7, "marking a change from the traditional two-night event," according to FingerLakes1. The committee said that combining them would ease the demands on volunteers. That year the festival moved to the Yates County Courtyard, and the parade route was extended to start on East Main Street by the Yates County Fairgrounds and finish on North Main Street in front of the Yates Community Center. The Chronicle-Express noted that it snowed on StarShine that year, for the first time in many years.

By 2025 the festival was back on Main Street, with the parade as its finale at 6:30 p.m. The 2026 schedule keeps that format, with the parade as the last event of the night.

What the FFA set out to show

The parade has a stated purpose, and it isn't Santa. The National FFA Organization described it in its FFA in the USA roundup: Penn Yan FFA members decorated farm equipment with Christmas lights and coordinated Lights on Wheels during the annual StarShine celebration "to show the strength of agriculture in their county."

The chapter has the record to back that up. Its page on the Penn Yan Academy site lists the 2024 NY State Chapter of the Year award and a 3-Star National Award. It also lists a first-place finish for its Agricultural Mechanics team and second place in Floriculture at the 2023 NY State FFA convention. Mrs. Bossard is the advisor, Mr. Chappell is the assistant, and the page names Lights on Wheels as one of the chapter's annual events.

An Agricultural Mechanics team that wins at state is the kind of group you'd expect to string lights on a tractor well.

The rule sheet assumes a tractor is coming

You can tell who a parade expects by reading its rules. The 2026 registration form, presented by the Yates County Chamber of Commerce and the Penn Yan FFA, reads like it was written for a lineup of farm equipment:

1. Size limits. Entries can be no more than 14 feet high, 12 feet wide and 70 feet long, and the form asks participants to "check the height of large self-propelled harvesters and floats."
2. Riders. No one rides on a tractor unless they're in an approved buddy seat, and no legs may dangle over the side of a vehicle or float.
3. Generators. All generators must be secured and kept away from anything combustible, with no refueling once the parade is moving.
4. Lights. Every entry has to be well lit, and any vehicle pulling a float has to be decorated too.
5. One Santa. Santa costumes aren't allowed, because there's only one Santa Claus and he rides on the last float.
6. No walkers and no candy. Every entry is on wheels, and nothing gets thrown.

A 70-foot length limit and a note about harvester height don't belong on a town float sheet. They're written for a parade that expects combines and tractors. The no-walkers rule keeps every entry on wheels, and the generator rule covers entries that make their own power on board. Entries with music are asked to play holiday music only.

The award sponsors show the same mix of farm and village. The Keuka Housing Council is the presenting sponsor, joined by Amity Coffee Co., CASA of the Southern Tier, Coach & Equipment, the Seneca Lake Duck Hunters Club and Wayne Bank.

How Saturday, December 5 runs

The Yates County Chamber's StarShine page lays out the day. On the parade side, the timing works like this:

• 3 p.m. StarShine opens on Main Street with local vendors, food and drinks, live entertainment, and activities for kids: wagon rides, pony rides, a petting zoo, magicians, face painting and Elf School games.
• 5:30 p.m. Parade entries stage on East Main Street, and check-in begins at Hoban's Spirits. The form says entries have to check in no later than one hour before the parade starts, so 5:30 is both the start and the cutoff.
• 6 p.m. StarShine's festival hours end.
• 6:30 p.m. Lights on Wheels leaves East Main Street, runs the length of Main Street and ends at the Court Street intersection.

The route is shorter than the extended 2024 version, which ran from the Fairgrounds end of East Main to the Yates Community Center on North Main. In 2026 the whole parade stays within the downtown blocks where the festival happens. So the people who spent the afternoon at the booths are already standing along the parade route.

Putting your own rig in the lineup

Entering costs nothing, but every entry has to register, and the deadline is Thursday, December 3, two days before the parade. The form recommends the County Office Complex for offloading, which helps if your entry comes in on a trailer. Questions go to the Yates County Chamber of Commerce at 315-536-3111 or to Carlie Bossard at [email protected].

If you're bringing kids along on an entry, the form sets a ratio. Children 5 and under need one adult each. For older children, at least one adult has to ride for every ten kids. Drivers must be licensed.

The awards are judged during the parade by what the form calls "a handful of local celebrity judges." A farm running a lit tractor can compete in Best Tractor, Best Use of Lights, Most Holiday Spirit and Best Overall all at once.

The weekend before, out toward Branchport

StarShine opens the holiday season downtown, but the farm side of December starts a week earlier on Keech Road. Highland Tree Farm, at 1985 Keech Road in Branchport, opens its pre-cut trees and Christmas Market for three days only: Black Friday, November 27; Small Business Saturday, November 28; and Sunday, November 29, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.

The Keuka Lake Wine Trail's Handcrafted Holiday falls on Saturday, November 14, but the wine trail lists it as sold out. For anyone without a ticket, the next big gathering in the north end is the evening a line of lit tractors comes down Main Street toward Court Street.

Whether you're decorating a tractor for Best Tractor or just picking your spot on Main Street, Mary loves this corner of Keuka in every season. If December has you thinking about a place of your own on Keuka's north end, Mary St.George (REAL Broker Finger Lakes) would love to hear from you. Call Mary for a Lakefront Consultation.