Junction City is kicking off the Christmas season Friday with the 18th annual Christmas Parade.

This years theme is Christmas in Toyland. Mark Ediger, who founded the parade, explained that they choose the theme each year by thinking about how well it will lend it self to people who design a float. “We kind of think about, what are some themes that would be easily adaptable to a float in the Christmas parade.”

Ediger said that this years parade will be right around the largest with about 60 entries,” I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the entries coming in. I thought early that we had a chance to have a pretty good sized parade by how early some of the entries were coming in.”

Although the floats won’t be revealed until the parade Ediger said that from some of the descriptions on the entry forms we can expect,”A lot of toys from what I can see, a lot of gifts. It will be interesting to see what we end up with.”

The parade will kick off from the Junction City High School parking lot at 5:30 p.m. Friday and the parade route will be south on Eisenhower then back east on 6th street. The parade will then take 6th street all the way to Washington where it will cut back north up to 8th street.

Santa Claus will finish up the parade at Heritage Park where he and Cecil Aska, Mayor of Junction City, will flip the switch that turns on the lights in the park.

This year the lights are different. The Junction City Young Professionals group has purchased light displays including an 18 and a half foot tall Santa Claus that will wave to all who pass by on 6th street.

Santa will also be available to greet all of the children with candy canes following the parade.