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On Thursday, December 5th, Oswego held it's first Children's Christmas Parade in conjunction with the Annual Tree-Lighting Ceremony.
"Originally, we thought we would be fortunate to have 30 participants, as a Christmas parade had never been attempted here before now." said Sabrina Young, an intern at iHeartOswego.com and one of the coordinators of the parade. "We were excited to see over 100 children participating and again as many adults; over 200 people marched, sang and danced in our parade!"
"The theme this year was How Do You Light Up Your Holidays?" said Victoria Usherwood Gailinas, the chairman of the Children's Christmas Parade committee. "All the children were lighted using glow sticks and glow necklaces including "Snickers", a one year old mix breed dog and parade Grand Marshall who was an LED light show all by himself." Snickers and his human Kevin Rookey, led the parade all the way to City Hall Plaza to see the annual Tree Lighting Ceremony.
"We are fortunate to live in a city where new ideas are embraced. From the city officials to the Oswego Police Department, everyone went out of their way to make this possible, we are sincerely grateful." said Gailinas.
Are plans for a 2014 Children's Christmas Parade in the works? "Yes!" said Young, "We have already begun planning to make it a little bigger yet still manageable next year."
For a gallery of event images, see http://www.iheartoswego.com/hot-pics/gallery/category/53-christmas-tree-lighting-2013.
