Marion hosts annual Christmas parade along the Walkway of Lights

The City of Marion hosted the annual Christmas Parade that went along the route of the Walkway of Lights on Friday. 

62 businesses and other organizations signed up to participate and created festive floats, starting the Christmas season for the hundreds of spectators from the community.

Andy Davis has been in charge of directing the Christmas Parade for the past few years.

“We know that [the Christmas Parade] was started in the 60’s, but then discontinued at some point, and it’s kind of gone off and on over the years,” Davis said, “So the current version of it has been about 15 years.”

The parade used to take place in the afternoon each year, but now it occurs in the evening. 

“The Walkway of Lights started in 1993, and the all day Christmas festival thing that we do now started in 2019,” Davis said.

The day’s festivities included Santa Claus arriving via helicopter, food trucks, vendors and more.

Cassie Beals and Megan Cadena, two local moms, enjoyed the celebration with their families.

“We were down here earlier, my oldest son played the Grinch down at the axe throwing. And then we got the kids to see Santa Claus,” Cadena said.

“I don’t think that there is a favorite part, it all is pretty neat,” said Beals, “I checked out the food court and got the delicious donuts.”

The parade appeared to be a popular way for the city to end the day of celebration. Hundreds of people gathered in the streets to watch the parade and the lights.

“Some of the floats are just so impressive. It blows me away,” Davis said, “So I feel like my part is easy compared to what they do so that they’re the ones who really make it great.”

Some groups in the parade were local school marching bands. Indiana Wesleyan University’s Marching Wildcats made an appearance towards the end of the parade, performing a rendition of “Santa Baby.”

Elsa Bickett, a member of IWU’s Color Guard, explained the process for preparing for the parade.

“We kind of spent like the last two or three weeks reviewing, we learned the choreo in one day, and then we just every practice would review at the beginning,” Bickett said, “It was cold, though. The band was playing their instruments to keep them warm too.”

Davis said many different groups participated in the parade.

“One of the neat things about is that there really is a variety,” Davis said, “Some of them are commercial businesses, some of them are nonprofits. We have school groups, social groups, so it’s really a wide variety of groups that are part of it.”