Christmas Eve Bonfires Light Up the Levee in St. James Parish, and Nobody Agrees on How the Custom Started

At 7 o'clock on Christmas Eve, if the wind cooperates, fire chiefs in St. James Parish give the signal and dozens of wooden towers along the Mississippi River levee go up in flames at roughly the same moment. The heaviest concentration is in Lutcher, Gramercy and Paulina, with a scattering of fires in neighboring Ascension and St. John the Baptist parishes. In 1999 there were more than 100 bonfires along a 3.4-mile stretch of levee in those three St. James communities, geographer William Fagan wrote in an essay published by the Louisiana Folklife Program.

Most of the structures are the shape people now consider traditional, a tall, narrow tepee of willow logs with long poles at the corners and shorter lengths fitted between them, stuffed with scrap wood and cane reed. The willow comes from the batture, ditches and nearby swamp, grows fast and has no commercial value. Cane reed is prized because it pops and crackles as it burns and throws orange sparks into the air. Builders need permits to put a bonfire on the levee, and the fire department can still call off the burning hours ahead if the wind is wrong, Country Roads magazine has reported. It rarely happens. The 2020 burning was called off because of the pandemic.

Ask people along River Road why they do it, and one of the most popular answers is that the fires light the way for Papa Noël, the Cajun Santa Claus. Local historians have their doubts. In a history published by the Festival of the Bonfires, Emily Chenet Guidry called it charming but improbable, noting that French families in early south Louisiana exchanged gifts on New Year's Eve, not Christmas. Lillian Bourgeois, in her 1957 history of St. James Parish, described New Year's Eve gatherings with gumbo, eggnog and huge cone-shaped bonfires on the batture, the land between the levee and the river. Over time, those celebrations drifted to Christmas Eve and up onto the levee.

Other theories hold that the fires guided boats on the river or lit the way for families crossing to Midnight Mass. Folklorist Marcia Gaudet concluded that the custom was "well established in Saint James and Saint John parishes before 1900, but definitely not before 1880." Fagan also cites a Jesuit priest from St. James whose family credited French Marist priests who came after the Civil War to teach at Jefferson College in Convent. Another line of thinking goes back much further, to the Alsatians and Germans who settled the river parishes beginning in the 1720s and brought with them bonfires for the feast of St. John the Baptist in June. In June 1988, members of a local genealogical society visiting Alsace saw summer bonfires that looked nearly identical in size and pyramid shape to the ones back home.

Some of the best evidence comes from interviews Guidry's group conducted in 1989 with the area's oldest residents. One man said his father, a St. James merchant born in 1855, built a Christmas Eve bonfire in front of his New Camellia Plantation store as early as 1884, using wooden shipping crates he saved all year. The fireworks and the noise of the children drew riverboat crews to stop and join in. Others remembered kerosene-soaked cotton balls being lit and rolled down the levee, and boys trying to hit the flag on top of a finished bonfire with flaming cotton.

Bonfire building stopped during World War II and came back stronger afterward. Boys in "bonfire clubs" cut willow with axes and hand saws and dragged the logs to the levee one at a time, and old tires went into the middle for thick smoke. In the mid-1950s a subdivision went up along River Road between Lutcher and Gramercy, and with so many young families living near the levee, Guidry wrote, the custom "exploded." Chainsaws and pickup trucks replaced hatchets and muscle, and tires were later banned.

Some builders went far beyond the tepee. Ronald St. Pierre, who was Gramercy's mayor by the late 1990s, built a Cajun cabin in 1984 that he said drew 64,000 people, then a 90-foot riverboat, an oil rig, a 105-foot steam train and in 1993 a replica of the State Capitol that stood 52 feet tall. Visitors could walk through his creations before he set them on fire. Asked by geographer William Fagan whether all that work was only to burn it, he answered, "Just to burn." In 2019 Josh Weidert and his friends in Garyville built a 78-foot wooden alligator, CNN reported.

For anyone who wants a preview, the Festival of the Bonfires in Lutcher runs Dec. 11 to 13 this year at Lutcher Recreational Park, 2545 Louisiana Avenue, with food, live music, crafts and rides. One bonfire will be lit on the levee at 7 p.m. that Friday, with a free bus shuttle, and another on the festival grounds at 8 p.m. Saturday, followed by fireworks.

On Christmas Eve itself, the festival advises arriving before 6 p.m., parking in the lots along LA 641 and walking three or four blocks to the levee for the 7 p.m. lighting. It also suggests spending the afternoon on the levee, where the finished bonfires stand waiting.

Photo: Eira Tansey / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.