Ghost Walking the Christmas Streets of Knoxville: The Inaugural Knoxville Santa Claus Parade

These days, the annual Knoxville Christmas parade that rolls along Gay Street, typically on the first Friday of December, remains as popular as ever. But everything has to start somewhere, and we have to look back almost 100 years to see how it all began. 

Cities of Knoxville’s size had been clamoring to get on the Christmas parade bandwagon since watching the Macy’s Christmas Parade be wildly received in New York in 1924. Even though that first one was staged on Thanksgiving Day, that Christmas parade was renamed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1935.

Inspired by Macy’s wildly popular parades, the Knoxville Journal took steps to stage the very first Christmas parade here in 1928, preferring to call it the Knoxville Santa Claus Parade. More than 30 floats, dignitaries and high school bands gathered for assembly on Main Street before stepping off at Gay Street at noon. Resplendent in traditional crimson attire made from a reindeer hide trimmed in white fur, Santa was pulled along in his sleigh on wheels by a team of four reindeer.

The event was also touted as being the biggest crowd ever assembled on Gay Street, with one local merchant quipping, “It was the most colorful peacetime parade in Knoxville’s long history.”

Written and read by Paul James.

Special thanks to producer Pete Carty. 

Knoxville Chronicles is brought to you by the nonprofit Knoxville History Project.

Funding for this episode has been kindly provided by the City of Knoxville and Friends of the Knoxville History Project. Learn more at KnoxvilleHistoryProject.org