December 2011. And the program that aims to keep things merry for main street merchants all year long.

They’re so different one from the other, these lovely little Main Street communities scattered across the map of this gumbo state of Louisiana. Even their Christmas celebrations are different, saluting the unique heritage and history of each place—from the Germanic nutcrackers celebrating Fasching season in Minden to a moss-hung Yuletide on the Bayou celebration in New Iberia, from the French flair of Les Lumieres du Village l’Abbeville to St. Francisville’s English-style Christmas in the Country. Every Main Street has its much-anticipated holiday parade and festival centered on its historic commercial corridor, welcoming the season with special activities and events tailored to celebrate their own heritage, making Christmas the ideal time to visit the Main Streets of Louisiana whether the season is heralded with the arrival of Pere Noel, Saint Nicholas, Kris Kringle or good ol’ all-American Santa.

The earliest of these Main Street communities developed along the major waterways, the Mississippi and the big bayous that were the initial highways for transporting crops and goods and pioneers. Others had to await the coming of the railroad, the tracks reaching inland to connect landlocked prairies to the outside world.

In the southerly coastal communities you can smell the salty sea breeze blowing off the Gulf and rippling the rows of sugarcane, with ancient live oaks hung with Spanish moss and the seafood so fresh it’s practically dripping. The westernmost ones have more Texas influence, while the North Louisiana communities are little islands of commerce and culture set amid the red-dirt hills and piney woods and fertile fields of cotton and corn and soybeans—miles and miles and miles of cotton and corn and soybeans.

The ones that are parish seats of government surround iconic courthouses and town squares, and the ethnic heritages are French, Spanish, Creole, Acadian, English, Italian, African, Caribbean, German and all the other cultural influences that make up this gumbo state of Louisiana. Three of these communities are so small they are not even considered cities, but are cited as towns in the 2010 Census. Populations range from tiny Columbia with only 390 hardy souls to the largest, Houma (33,727), closely followed by New Iberia and Slidell. Many of the Main Street districts are also National Register Historic Districts and Cultural Districts.

And yet, as different as they seem, from the cypress swamps to the pine forests and wide open prairies, they all have one thing in common—a burning desire to hold on to their unique sense of place and to preserve the early commercial corridors that were once the heart and soul of the communities and sometimes still are. What unites them, in this age of sterile suburban strip malls and characterless cookie-cutter big-box shopping centers, is the struggle to hang on to what makes them different, unique, so very special.

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