The inaugural Christmas City of the North Parade was in 1961

Debate about when the first Christmas City of the North Parade happened has been rekindled numerous times since 2008, when KBJR-TV promoted the 48th annual parade as the “50th annual.” That year Andrew Krueger, then a copy editor at the Duluth News Tribune, set the record straight, digging through newspaper archives that strongly suggested, but maybe didn’t definitively prove, the parade was first held in 1961.

KBJR, then and now, points to 1958 as the first year of the parade.

It is finally time to set aside unreasonable doubt. The short version of the story is this: Krueger was correct. The first Christmas City of the North Parade was held Nov. 17, 1961.

During the various debates about the subject on Perfect Duluth Day, yours truly Paul Lundgren weighed in with the opinion that “most evidence points to 1960 as the first year,” even though there was no evidence of a parade that year. I was wrong. I was wrong because I fell for a frequently repeated falsehood. Krueger had it right, but he missed, or at least failed to mention, one detail that would have tied it all together.

The evidence Krueger brought forward in 2008 basically amounted to this:

1. 1961 is the first year the parade is reported on in the Duluth Herald and the Duluth News-Tribune.
2. It is practically preposterous to suggest the parade happened in previous years and wasn’t mentioned in the paper.
3. In subsequent years, the parade was promoted as the __ annual, with a number corresponding with 1961 being the first year.
4. WDSM TV listings do not show a parade broadcast prior to 1961. (WDSM is the predecessor of KBJR.)

That’s pretty substantial. The only reason I was thinking 1960 might be the year is that I had heard repeated so many times that the parade was canceled in 1963. That would have meant, if 1964 was the fourth annual, and there wasn’t a parade in 1963, the third annual would have been in 1962, second annual in 1961 and inaugural in 1960. Maybe the first parade was so small it didn’t get a mention in the paper, I thought.

But that whole theory was built on a false premise no one ever corrected me on. Until now.

I was listening to the Duluth News Tribune’s Northlandia podcast episode “Merv Griffin’s Ode to Duluth, ‘Christmas City’,” when the paper’s arts and entertainment reporter Jay Gabler stated the following:

Lore has it that the Christmas City of the North Parade has only been canceled once, in 1963, because of the then very recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The truth there is that it did not happen as scheduled, however, it did, in fact, happen in 1963, they just pushed it back a week. So there’s been a parade every year, it just was rescheduled that year due to the national mourning.

Gabler is correct. The 1963 Christmas City of the North Parade was not canceled; it was postponed. It happened one week later. The Duluth Herald has a photo of Santa waving from the Duluth Jaycees Toys for Tots parade float and a description of the weekend’s Christmas City events. The parade happened in 1963.

Yet, somehow, even KBLR has continued to repeat the myth that the parade was canceled and not postponed in 1963.
 

A video history of the parade from 2023 mentions three times that 1963 is the only year the parade didn’t happen. And for some reason all the old timers who were around back then have it firmly entrenched in their minds that the parade was canceled, even though they were presumably there when it actually happened. They remember not having the parade the week it was scheduled, and that memory seems to override the reality that it happened a week later.

Furthermore, the Duluth Herald refers to the 1963 parade as the “third annual.” There is just no chance anyone lost count of what annual it was within three years. And keep in mind that, at the time, WDSM-TV was owned by Ridder Newspapers, which also owned the local papers. They were all firmly connected to the event and, presumably, could count to three.

As Gabler also points out in the podcast, the newspapers were promoting Duluth as the “Christmas City of the North” prior to the parade’s existence, which might be why KBJR TV to this day still considers 1958 to be the first year of the parade and consequently will promote this year’s parade as the 67th annual when it is really the 65th annual.

Below are more clippings from 1961.