South Zanesville Holiday Parade Draws Crowd

SOUTH ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Area residents armed with lawn chairs
braved the cold weather as early as 7 AM today as South Zanesville
officially kicked off the Christmas season with a parade down
Maysville Pike. Angie Grigg, Vice President of the South Zanesville
Business Association, says the annual Holiday Parade is sponsored by
area businesses.

“We’ve done it
for over 30 years. We used to basically just do it with parade
registrations, but times got a little harder—ran out of some
money—so we started doing it with sponsorships with different
businesses. And, we do it for the kids basically. We hand out candy;
there’s little surprises for people along the way.”

In addition to
seeing Santa Claus ride into town, new to the parade this year was
the option of pizza and hot chocolate to keep spectators warm.

“The kids are here
for so long we actually have Domino’s Pizza and we’re serving hot
chocolate, water, and pizza if they want to purchase that. So they’re
not starved waiting for that one o’clock or two o’clock for the
parade to go on.”

The annual South
Zanesville Business Association Holiday Parade draws nearly 10,000
spectators each year. This year’s event featured 20 more entries
than the previous year.