By Brittany Snow
Staff Writer
“In New York, people are buried in the snow. Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise,” proposed Professor Charles F. Holder during a Pasadena Valley Hunt Club meeting in early 1890.
This celebration continued for decades and now, the Rose Parade is an annual tradition. This tradition, enjoyed by many, improves each year as the planning committees find new ways to top the previous year’s show.
In this club, participants discussed ways to promote the beauties of Pasadena. Holder wanted to have sets of displays to showcase the city’s attractions, history, and splendor. With these displays came flowers and animals—especially horses to pull carriages.
Months of planning for the first parade consisted of gathering volunteers and hiring workers to spend hours in preparation for the celebration. Those volunteers would be in charge of numerous tasks to help ensure that the parade ran smoothly. A few of those jobs included calling City Hall to arrange the pathway for the parade, booking local bands to perform, and calling florists to obtain a sufficient amount of flowers for the parade floats.
On Jan. 1, 1891, hundreds of thousands of people gathered around Colorado Boulevard to witness the first Rose Parade hosted in Pasadena. After the success of the first celebration to kick off the new year, the committee began to plan another parade for the upcoming year.
The committee rapidly increased in numbers, and in 1895, what was once a group managed only by the Valley Hunt Club became the Tournament of Roses Association. The organization uses the same creates new themes and elects a grand marshal to lead the Rose Parade every year. The basics of planning process has remained the same since the first years of the Rose Parade. Floats, equestrian units, and marching bands have been essential elements of the parade tradition.
The organization of the parade had not been any trouble until 1893, the year the parade fell on a Sunday. The organizers did not want to disturb horses hitched outside Sunday church services, and also did not want to rearrange viewers’ plans by staging the parade on a Sunday. However, the committee did not want to miss a year just because of a conflict with dates. The known “Never on a Sunday” tradition started on New Year’s of 1893, as it was hosted on Jan. 2 instead of the actual New Year’s date.
Luckily, the 2018 Rose Parade falls on a Monday. The 2018 Grand Marshall will be Gary Sinise, an actor in Apollo 13, Forrest Gump, Of Mice and Men, and many more films. He will be leading the 129th Rose Parade hosted by Honda.
