Downtown News
Tupelo parade has been around for 63 years
November 30 2011
Tupelo’s 63rd annual Christmas Parade, sponsored since 2003 by Reed’s of Tupelo, steps off in downtown Saturday at 10 a.m., with 108 units setting a holiday tone for thousands of spectators expected from across the region.
Now officially known as Reed’s Tupelo Christmas Parade, the parade started under sponsorship of the Community Development Foundation, one of its first projects and inarguably among its most popular undertakings.
Harry Martin, CDF’s retired chief executive, said the parade has “always been a constituent- driven event ... that’s the reason that at one time it was held at night, to accommodate people, especially women, who worked all day but wanted to bring their children to the parade.”
A shift to a Saturday daytime parade in the 1990s reflected changing preferences of spectators who had weekends off and could easily attend on one of the days, Martin said.
This year’s parade will have 32 floats, and the last one will be the most anticipated: Santa, his sleigh and reindeer flying and leaping, lights blinking and music playing. The float was once the front lawn decoration at Hardin’s Bakery on North Gloster Street, and after its Tupelo operation closed, negotiations led to its donation to Tupelo Junior Auxiliary, and then to Truck Center of Tupelo, which remains its owner and caregiver.
Santa Claus, it’s reported, will return to the North Pole immediately after the parade.
by Joe Rutherford/ NEMS Daily Journal printed on November 30, 2011
