As A Literal Parade
"Parade of horribles" originally referred to a literal parade of people wearing comic and grotesque costumes, rather like the Philadelphia Mummers Parade. It was a traditional feature of Fourth of July parades in parts of the United States in the nineteenth century, and "Horribles Parades" continue to be part of the Independence Day celebration in several New England communities. A 1926 newspaper article about July the Fourth celebrations in the White Mountains of New Hampshire notes:
Old-time celebrations are to be held tomorrow at Littleton, Lancaster, Colebrook, and Conway, with all the usual features of street parades of horribles and grotesques, brass bands, decorated automobiles and vehicles, exhibitions by fire departments, basket picnics in convenient groves...
Founded in 1926, the Ancient and Horribles Parade in Chepachet, Rhode Island continues this tradition.
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Famous quotes containing the words literal and/or parade:
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Chaucer’s remarkably trustful and affectionate character appears in his familiar, yet innocent and reverent, manner of speaking of his God. He comes into his thought without any false reverence, and with no more parade than the zephyr to his ear.... There is less love and simple, practical trust in Shakespeare and Milton. How rarely in our English tongue do we find expressed any affection for God! Herbert almost alone expresses it, “Ah, my dear God!””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)