Greetings family, friends, and neighbors. This week's Snippet "Never on Sunday" is about the New Year's Day Rose Parade and the roots of a 135 year tradition.....Bill

New Year’s Snippet

NEVER ON SUNDAY

TOURNAMENT OF ROSES PARADE

“In New York, people are buried in snow. Here our flowers are blooming and the oranges are about to bear. Let’s hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise”

Wealthy members of Pasadena’s Valley Hunt Club, many former residents of the East Coast and Mid West, were eager to draw attention to the mild Southern California climate and property purchasing opportunities by staging an annual festival and parade celebrating the region’s winter blooming flowers and citrus. 

The first parade was staged on New Years Day in 1890 and is held every January 1 st except when it falls on a Sunday. In that case, the event is held on the subsequent Monday as organizers didn’t want to disturb horses hitched outside Sunday Church services along the five and a half mile parade route. Over the next several years organizers added marching bands, motorized floats and equestrian units to the parade and required that every square inch of parade floats must be covered with flowers or other natural materials including bark, seeds, and leaves. 

By 1895 the event became too large for the Valley Hunt Club to manage resulting in the formation of the non-profit Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association. The town lot on which activities including ostrich races, bronco busting and novelty races between unlikely competitors were held was renamed Tournament Park, and to offset the cost of the parade and festival the first college Rose Bowl football game was held on New Years Day,1902.

Disney’s relationship with the Rose Parade spans decades, starting with Snow White, their first float in 1938, and previewing Disneyland in 1955, Walt Disney served as the parades Grand Marshall in 1966 and usually Disney has a float every year. Knotts Berry Farm participated in the 1971 parade with a nostalgic nod to the farms Old West roots. Hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the first parade of horse drawn flower decked floats 135 years ago and now hundreds of millions worldwide watch the festivities on TV each New Years Day (but never on Sunday)

WISHING YOU A HEALTHY AND HAPPY 2026

from the Ralphs