The Kleefeld Christmas Parade is taking place this weekend. It’s in Kleefeld, but anyone is welcome to come out and enjoy the parade. 

Unlike most parades, the Kleefeld Christmas Parade happens when it’s already dark outside. 

You can see the floats in the dark because of all the lights they use to decorate the floats.

Santa is coming to join the parade, as well as a number of local businesses from Steinbach, Kleefeld, and Grunthal.

This is Taylor Friesen’s first year as Parade Marshall, and he’s had a great time being a part of all the planning. He says they currently expect to have around 12-15 floats, but maybe more. 

“What happened last year is we had a lot of last-minute people wanting to jump in, so hopefully I'm hoping for 20, that would be ideal.” 

The reason they did a parade last year was to find a way to get the community together during COVID. 

“We were still really shut down for COVID and we decided instead of having a Christmas event for the community, to have a Christmas parade. And it went over really well, so we decided to do it again.” 

He notes they received an overwhelmingly positive response from the community when they started it up last year. A lot of people from both inside and outside of Kleefeld came to watch. 

“The streets were just packed with people, so a lot of outsiders came as well!" 

They ask that everyone brings a tin for the bin because Grunthal Food Bank will be collecting items during the parade route.  

If you want to register to have a float in the parade, you can contact Friesen by phone or text at (204) 381-7131.

The parade is this Saturday, December 3rd, at 6 PM. The route is shown below.