Staff Writer

Although it doesn’t look a lot like Christmas weather-wise, the city of Troy kicked off the holiday season anyway as people crowded the downtown sidewalks to see the annual Christmas Parade and tree-lighting ceremony Monday night on the square.

Several different organizations participated in the parade including six departments from the city of Troy.

According to Diane Ferguson, Mayor Jimmy Lunsford asked each of the city departments to contribute by putting a unit in the parade.

"When we first took over the parade over a year ago there wasn’t much participation," Ferguson said. "The main reason that the city added six floats in the parade was to get more participation."

Up until the parade, the identity of the floats and even their themes were kept secret.

Each of the city departments kept their individual floats at a different place, working busily to better their opponents.

The six departments were in competition against each other, with the winning participants receiving a special reward. The competition, although friendly, wasn’t overly friendly as even the names of the judges were kept secret until after the parade.

Leading the parade was the glittering blue and gold "city of Troy" float which carried Mayor Jimmy Lunsford and the Troy City Council. Also riding the float was Stella Ginyard and Blake Hendricks, who assisted the mayor in lighting the Christmas tree downtown on the square.

The parade included many familiar faces such as T-Roy and the Trojan Princess and several high school marching bands. One of the more animated floats had the Christmas Grinch at the reins of santa’s sleigh.

Santa was spotted several times in the parade as the caravan of floats winded its way from start to finish. One of the more memorable santa sightings in this year’s Christmas parade will probably be the version of santa riding in the bucket of a John Deere front-end loader.

Among other floats, Troy Public Library entered an attractive float into the parade that was covered with a slew of reindeer which were accompanied by two snowmen towering over them. The library’s float won first place in the parade and the Troy Parks and Recreational Department received an honorable mention for their efforts.

As the parade came to an end and all of the firetruck’s sirens died down, Troy States’ Sound of the South put another Christmas Parade in the books by playing ‘God Bless America’, under Troy’s light-strung square.