Thursday, April 25, 2024 | St. Lawrence County, NY
By LISA HOOVER OGDENSBURG -- The “Light up the Night” Christmas parade will be Nov. 23 this year, with highlights to include nearly 100 floats, pictures with Santa, and the climactic tree …
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By LISA HOOVER
OGDENSBURG -- The “Light up the Night” Christmas parade will be Nov. 23 this year, with highlights to include nearly 100 floats, pictures with Santa, and the climactic tree lighting.
The evening, sponsored by the Ogdensburg and Lisbon Lions Clubs, will kick off with music, a sing-along, and hot chocolate at city hall at 5 p.m., according to Sandra Porter, executive director at the Greater Ogdensburg Chamber of Commerce.
The parade will begin at Ogdensburg Free Academy’s dome at 6 p.m. and will proceed down State Street and onto Ford Street, before ending at city hall for the tree lighting ceremony, Porter said.
“Kids can get off the floats and go in and have their photos taken with Santa” at one point on the parade route, she said. “They have on the stage this backdrop, it looks like a lighted fireplace.”
“Over 100 lighted floats” are scheduled to participate, most made by local organizations, Porter said. The chamber will provide a horse drawn wagon.
“These floats are very elaborate,” Porter said. “Just amazing.”
“This is the third year” for this parade, and it has “grown a lot,” she said.
The evening will wrap up with the annual Christmas tree lighting after Santa and Mrs. Clause arrive at city hall. “The mayor flips the switch, and gets all the kids to count down,” Porter said.
The kids can get pretty excited about the lighting ceremony. “They’re beside themselves, and then we give them more sugar and send them home,” she said.
The parade has replaced the traditional Santa parade. “The city used to do a Santa parade like the first Saturday in December,” Porter said.
“It was a short parade, wasn’t terribly well attended,” she said. Then the event organizers “went to Prescott a few years ago….and they have a parade the Saturday after Thanksgiving.”
The Prescott parade “was fabulous” and made the Ogdensburg organizers “think about doing it for Ogdensburg,” she explained.
The parade “kicks off the holiday season,” designed to mark the start of the “shopping and holiday feeling,” Porter said.
