Holiday

2014 Christmas parade story

Almost 50,000 people packed downtown Raleigh streets Saturday morning for the 69th annual WRAL-TV Raleigh Christmas Parade.

Posted — Updated

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 video.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Get ready for the 70th anniversary of the WRAL-TV Raleigh Christmas Parade, presented by Shop Local Raleigh. Live television coverage begins Saturday, November 22nd at 10am from downtown Raleigh.
Over 65,000 people will line the street for this spectacular show, in addition to thousands more watching at home. This event annually ranks as one of the largest parades on the East Coast.

The parade is hosted by WRAL-TV morning news personalities Bill Leslie and Renee Chou, with Lynda Loveland serving as street-side reporter. The grand marshal of this year’s parade is Ira David Wood III, whose Theater in the Park is celebrating the 40 anniversary of A Christmas Carol.

This year’s parade will feature 115 entries, including marching bands, festive floats, giant balloons, animals, entertainers, specialty vehicles, plus special holiday surprises.

The parade route is 1.2 miles long, starting at the corner of Hillsborough and St. Mary’s Street. The parade travels east on Hillsborough Street, turns south at the Capitol on Salisbury Street, east on Morgan and then makes a final turn down Fayetteville Street.

This is the 41st consecutive year that the event will be broadcast live by WRAL-TV. The parade will also be streamed live on WRAL.com and viewers across North Carolina can watch the parade on UNC-EX. Replays will be broadcast Saturdays at 10am during December (excluding Dec. 27) on WRAL2 , plus a special holiday presentation on WRAL-TV at 4pm on Christmas Day.

Track the parade progress and share your photos and parade vantage point on Twitter using #RaleighParade. There users can interact with Santa himself, asking questions and getting live answers beginning Nov. 22 and through the holiday season.

“Ask Santa” is a new holiday season feature on WRAL.com where Santa will answer questions from local kids.

After the parade, go to WRAL.com and search the word “parade” to view photos from this year and from past parades. You can also watch the entire parade or just the individual groups that you want to see, on-demand, any time.

The 2014 WRAL-TV Raleigh Christmas Parade is sponsored by WakeMed.

Suggest A Correction

• Credits 

Copyright 2024 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.