{"id":27507,"date":"2022-12-01T20:37:45","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T01:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=27507"},"modified":"2022-12-01T20:37:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T01:37:51","slug":"41st-annual-lakeland-christmas-parade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/12\/01\/41st-annual-lakeland-christmas-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"41st annual Lakeland Christmas parade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">20,000 revelers watched marching bands play music, people wave from floats, and\u00a0even a couple gets married\u00a0at the Lakeland Christmas parade Thursday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FLakelandGov%2Fvideos%2F1445425352654749%2F&#038;show_text=0&#038;width=560\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" style=\"border:none;overflow:hidden\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowFullScreen=\"true\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat\u2019s so beautiful about the Lakeland Christmas parade is that it is one of a kind and it\u2019s arguably one of the biggest Christmas parades that\u2019s in the central Florida area,\u201d said Maggie Briggs, president of the Junior League of Greater Lakeland, which hosts the parade with the city of Lakeland every year. \u201cPeople drive for miles and miles and miles to come to this parade.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>But the Junior League of Greater Lakeland and the City of Lakeland continually break their own policies\/ rules for the third year. And Briggs does not even care as long as keeps the small business out of the parade.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People were setting their chairs out days in advance to secure a spot to watch the parade, causing safety hazards on the sidewalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In recent years, the city has restricted its policy to only allow chairs to be placed on the day of the parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI can tell you this is the first year that we didn\u2019t see a chair out until the day of the event, so thank you, citizens. It\u2019s been a big issue,\u201d said Kevin Cook, city of Lakeland communications director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The parade, considered the biggest event of the year in Lakeland, requires involvement from several city departments, including public works, Lakeland Fire \/ Police Departments, and even solid waste. The parade is paid from your tax dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">More than 100 Lakeland police officers will be working the event as well, an official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>20,000 revelers watched marching bands play music, people wave from floats, and\u00a0even a couple gets married\u00a0at the Lakeland Christmas parade Thursday evening. \u201cWhat\u2019s so beautiful about the Lakeland Christmas parade&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[3966],"class_list":["post-27507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-41st-annual-lakeland-christmas-parade"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}