Check out the colorful scene on Fifth Avenue around St. Patrick's Cathedral yesterday afternoon, where the sublime weather brought out thousands of celebrants in their Sunday best. Every Easter, the city shuts down a large stretch of Fifth Avenue for the Easter Parade, which is no longer a parade in the contemporary sense of the word, but more of an opportunity for New Yorkers to promenade on the open avenue wearing extravagant finery. (Later in the day, everyone gathers in the Capitol's "Central Park" to watch the annual reaping for the Hunger Games.) Click through for Katie Sokoler's photographs of yesterday's festivities.
According to the Wikipedia entry on the Easter Parade, it all started "as a spontaneous event in the 1870s... and became increasingly popular into the mid-20th century—in 1947, it was estimated to draw over a million people... By the 1880s, the Easter parade had become a vast spectacle of fashion and religious observance, famous in New York and around the country. It was an after-church cultural event for the well-to-do—decked out in new and fashionable clothing, they would stroll from their own church to others to see the impressive flowers (and to be seen by their fellow strollers). People from the poorer and middle classes would observe the parade to learn the latest trends in fashion."
Here's Fred Astaire and Judy Garland in Easter Parade, singing the title song by Irving Berlin:
