So, our Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade is tomorrow and it’s a pretty big deal. I was wondering if you had a similar parade in your country during the holidays that is nationally televised or, well-known? I know a lot of our media makes it over there, does the Macy’s parade? We don’t really have as big of a parade for Christmas.
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There is no national parade that I know of but most places hold their own parades for King’s Day. And also at Carnaval for the places that celebrate it (mostly in the South)
Non military parades are not our thing. We get a march rather than a parade on Independence Day in November – a huge televised affair plagued by controversy every year. We also get a military parade on the Armed Forces Day in August and on Constiution Day in May – also televised although I don’t know how many people actually watch them.
We used to have an actual parade on the Labour Day in communist times but the holiday went out of fashion for obvious reasons.
The Finnish Defense Forces organize an independence day parade on the 6th of December. It does get televised among other festivities.
Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Switzerland and for Christmas, Easter or our National Day, there are no parades. What we have, of course, is carnival. That’s in February and it is celebrated in most Swiss towns and cities, though Basel is considered the “capital” of carnival in our country.
More uniquely, in Zurich we have a local holiday called *Sechseläuten*. It is celebrated every April and involves a parade of men and women who are dressed up like medieval craftsmen and merchants. Some of them ride horses which are also dressed up to look very beautiful and medieval. The holiday dates back to the times when guilds became very important and began to flourish, making some of their members very rich (ca. 15th century). Because guilds in Switzerland do not allow women to join them, women also weren’t permitted to participate in the parade until quite recently. Since 2011, they are allowed to walk along, though the men get to be at the tip of the parade. There are also children who wear flowers in their hair. The grand finale of the celebration comes when the parade arrives at the *Sechseläutenplatz*, the Sechseläuten-square, right in front of the Zurich opera. There, a giant man that is called *Böögg*, is made of cotton, linen and straw and looks a bit like a snowman, is set on fire. The figure is about 10 meters (30 feet) high and its head is filled with some type of material that causes a mild explosion when it catches fire. This makes the head of the Böögg explode. Old rumors have it that the time it takes from lighting the figure until the head explodes is an indicator for how warm that year’s summer will be. The less time it takes, the better the summer.
The parade also has its own [march](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdMBiwk18hI), which at the same time is considered the “hymn of Zurich”.
[Here’s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHGKHn-Om-o) some footage from the parade back in 2015.
No, we don’t really have parades. Military and/or Blasmusik groups have small local parades, and the Almabtrieb could be called a parade I suppose. Cows ornately decorated in flowers are fun to watch.
St. Patrick’s Day would be the biggest.
In the North they also have the Orange Order marches, but those are… ahem…
In Spain there are parades everywhere on January the 5th in the late afternoon, when the Three Wise Men arrive to bring gifts for all the children. The people on the parade throw candy at the children and after the parade you must go home and go to bed inmediately so that you will have your presents in the morning.
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[Rosenmontagsumzug](https://www.google.com/search?q=rosenmontagsumzug&tbm=isch)
It’s held in several cities at the very same day, *Rosenmontag*. 48 days before Easter. Some cities have it less traditional and do it one day earlier on Sunday for larger attendance.
And then, there’s [Schützenumzug](https://www.google.com/search?q=Schützenumzug&tbm=isch) where the local vigilante organizes a parade and a large fun fair once per year.
While we do have a lot of parades, mostly for local festivals and for carnival, big parades on holidays are not a thing.
[May 17th](http://www.google.com/search?biw=360&bih=512&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=may+17th+norway&oq=May+17&aqs=mobile-gws-lite.0.0l5 ) is our Constitution Day. People dress up in their Bunads an waving the flag.
France has a military parade for July 14th, Bastille Day, thats on tv. And there are parades for Carnival, but I dont think any of those are televised.
Our season for costumes parties and parades (= Halloween and Thanksgiving) is February and March and called Carnival. There’s no Holidays around now.
June 2nd is the Republic’s Day in Italy and it’s celebrated with a military parade in Rome, plus some events have the parades like during the Alpini’s gathering all the regional group marches in the street of the city picked and it’s televised.
Only one that comes to my mind apart from the Independence day parade mentioned earlier is the [opening of the Christmas street](https://www.myhelsinki.fi/en/see-and-do/events/opening-of-christmas-in-helsinki-2021) parade, but that is quite small parade.
We have parades like :
* Carnival: [https://youtu.be/x49IkQOF-CY](https://youtu.be/x49IkQOF-CY) ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_of_Binche](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_of_Binche), the most famous). What you see flying is blood oranges.
* Marches de l’Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse : [https://youtu.be/PGvtrta41Fo](https://youtu.be/PGvtrta41Fo) ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marches_of_Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marches_of_Entre-Sambre-et-Meuse)) which are “military procession”.
* Student/university Parades: usually around december 6th (Saint Nicolas, since HE’s the patron of students): http://criscrossing.blogspot.com/2011/12/la-saint-nicolas-des-etudiants-in-liege.html
No Parades here but carnival…. maybe would wake bad memories.
Macy’s parade is a bit of an outlier as it was basically a big advertising stunt.
In the UK, there are probably walk-bys on national events on Rememberance (Memorial) Sunday. Apart from that the nearest is Notting Hill Carnival, but that’s more like live coverage on news channels over being a TV event that gets advertised.
Our main parades are on the holy week army ones religius ones but not just parades like that they are mainly like this (in my zone at least)
[-Example of my city](https://i.blogs.es/a571c5/ssvalladolid/450_1000.jpg) —– [This are called Manolas](https://www.leonoticias.com/frontend/leonoticias/adjuntos/5(144).jpg) — [another photo](http://www.historiasdemiciudad.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/semana-santa-valladolid-2.jpg)
Basically the called cofrades parade with sculptures related to the cristian religion, i dont really know if this is common apart from Spain so it may be common elsewhere in Europe(confirm me if yes please)
The origin is on the start of the reformation so the sculptures called are from the 17 century.
The cofrades can be from diferent orders one of the more relevant of my city are
[“Cofradia de la Piedad”](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/8z-KdJ49CHHuSNwliKUG35mZPsGQHttOc5xQqRRb5jdu9p37LPVuzXJbFLtVq0WYye0H_QrXt3fvzvsl9FL0HJ-sE0VdvzG_P_ysISGK1sfFZSjFMbnMAp_uECI-4Oesi7aTZXbOQU47JyAgQhc9fMHMJoefFEXfP-HCvnpS-ibh)
[“Cofradia de la Vera Cruz”](https://www.info.valladolid.es/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/SS_VeraCruz.png)
[“Cofradia de la Pasion”](https://jcssva.org/web/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Pasi%C3%B3n-080.jpg)
[“Cofradia de las Angustias”](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/Uniforme_de_las_Angustias_%28Valladolid%29.svg/200px-Uniforme_de_las_Angustias_%28Valladolid%29.svg.png)
[“Cofradia de Jesus Nazareno”](https://www.agronewscastillayleon.com/sites/default/files/field/image/img-20150405-wa0026.jpg)
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[A video of it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um45E8CGsD8&t=4067s) yeah long as hell
It’s for children, but when Saint Nicholas “arrives” in the Netherlands by boat from Spain in November that’s a televised annual event.
The city he arrives can change every year. Arriving is a “live” event that you can attend, but on TV it’s usually accompanied by some (probably prerecorded) scripted backstory.
It usually involves something going wrong and we might not get the presents to the children on time!
Saint Nicholas is called Sinterklaas, but is a separate person from Santa Claus here.
Santa Claus does exist and is simply called Kerstman (Christmas Man), but he is not as big here compared to either the US or Saint Nicholas.
(The short story of having both St Nicks is one of several cultures influencing back and forth)
PS. The celebration is accompanied by some racial undertones of which keeping/changing them is quite a polarizing topic. I purposefully don’t engage here, but is strange to not mention.
I had never heard of Macy’s Parade until I watched a video on YouTube that talked about it, so I very much doubt the average Portuguese or Spaniard has ever heard about it. And we don’t have anything similar during Christmas.
We have military parades during some holidays, such as June 10 in Portugal and October 12 in Spain, but that’s it.
Only in national holidays where there are both student and military parades
The only telvised parades that I can think of are the big Karneval/Fasching parades. A lot of places have them, but only the big ones from the Rhineland get televised.
Other than that I don’t know of any parades besides some smaller ones in various villages for different reasons.
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My favorite one btw is from my neighbouring village where they celebrate the so called “Pfingstreiten” (penecost riding). There is a parade with a marching band, all the clubs from the village, the village firefighters, the secondary school has some kids in there, the kids of the local kindergarten are there, the kids from the primary school in the neighboring village are in there with “horses” made of willow branches.
The parade goes through the whole village and at the end there is a big party on the main square and in the village museum you can get coffee and cake and see all the things they got there.
The story behind this was from the 30 years war. When the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf came to the village he demanded a lot of horses otherwise they would burn down the village. The villagers didn’t have enough horses for him so the village teacher had an idea. They took willow branches and carved them in a way that they represent a horse. They then gave every kid in the village one of those branches and “rode” to the Swedish king to give him their “horses”. The king seemed to have liked this and he didn’t loot and burn down the village.
Only religious processions, no real “parade” in the american sense
UK – Nationwide parades are normally military related. Particularly on Remembrance Sunday (11th Nov) there’s a lot, including a big one in London. Nowadays there’s often ones for anniversaries of VE day too. There’s also Gay Pride and the Caribbean Parades too, which are in different cities on different weekends with one or two ‘big’ events that the national media takes interest in, usually in London. All other parades tend to be very localised, and very wacky, other than Orange Order marches in NI and areas in West Scotland and Merseyside which are very political.
Germany – The catholic areas have parades for fasching/fastnachts in early March. The kids in the same areas also do a cute parade on Martinstag (11th Nov) where they carry homemade lanterns to a bonfire in unison. 1st May is Labour Day and a lot of various parades happen in big cities that are half celebratory, half political demonstrations. In my city there’s a restored Red Army truck that drives round workers neighbourhoods urging people to come to the parade with a megaphone.
The vienna pride is called Regenbogenparade, that’s the only parade I can think of in my country