VALDOSTA – The Valdosta Christmas Parade may not have taken a break due to the pandemic but it showed more vigor than last year. 

Hundreds of people lined the streets of Valdosta from the intersection of North Patterson Street and Woodrow Wilson Drive to the edge of downtown watching the parade pass by.

The 2021 Christmas Parade featured 123 entries, including 57 floats.

The turnout was far more than expected and much larger than the 2020 parade, triple the size in fact, said Bob Cosby, imperial ambassador at large at Ossipe Temple.

As Ossipe Temple is the host of the parade, partnering with Valdosta Main Street, Cosby saw first hand how much better the parade was this year.

“The number of actual floats that are decorated each year now just seem to get better and better,” he said. “I mean some of those floats were just pure awesome.”

Some of the floats featured what an onlooker would expect — a scene from a winter wonderland, Santa’s sleigh, etc. — but others brought pop culture into the mix like the Grinch or Star Wars.

But one of the parade’s biggest standout entries were its three bands.

Valdosta High School Marchin’ Cats, Lowndes High School Georgia Bridgemen and Lanier County High School Marching Bulldogs bands joined the lineup, boasting a parade feature that hasn’t been seen in half a decade.

Cosby said he wanted Brooks County High School to join as well but the band was out of town for the playoffs. He said he hopes to have five bands play the parade in the future, too.

He remembers a time when the parade had more than 300 entries and wants to bring it back to that point. He thinks adding two more bands will do the job.

Making sure people had fun was an important aspect of the parade given the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been a topic of every meeting the parade planning committee has had this year, organizers said.

Cosby said they made sure to distance parade entries a bit more than usual following COVID-19 guidelines but added he still saw people enjoying the event all the same.

“When you came down the street, I think you can see the joy on people’s faces,” he said. “(In this endeavor) they were able to get out of the house and bring their kids out, too.”

Just seeing the smile on kids’ faces was unbelievable, he said, making everything worth it.