Mother Goose Parade canceled a second year

Those hoping to see giant, animal-shaped balloons and floats glide through Main Street in El Cajon will have to wait a little longer for the return of the annual Mother Goose Parade as the event is on hiatus for yet another year.

The annual parade’s operator announced on social media that it would be skipping 2023. According to posts on Facebook and Instagram, event planners are preparing for a new chapter of the parade that will be “re-imagined as a new classic” when it is scheduled to return in 2024.

Starting in 1947, the Mother Goose parade was held annually on the Sunday before Thanksgiving for 75 years, including two years that it was held virtually in 2020 and 2021 as a pandemic-era precaution.

The El Cajon Valley Mother Goose Parade Association — the nonprofit that oversees the parade — made more than $73,000 in revenue in 2019, which tax records show exceeded expenses.

Last year’s parade was canceled weeks before it was scheduled to take place, with Mother Goose Parade Association Executive Director Patti Tuttle Shyrock writing in a statement that the decision was caused by “unprecedented staffing, logistics and supply chain challenges.”

She added at the time that organizers “did not want to produce an event that was anything less than outstanding.”

The virtual parade in 2020 was held as a televised special to prevent the spread of COVID-19. During the broadcast, co-host and San Diego Padres broadcaster Mark Grant said “in its history, the Mother Goose Parade has never been canceled and we’re not about to break with tradition.”

The parade was postponed for a week following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who died a week before Thanksgiving in 1963.

Officials from the El Cajon Valley Mother Goose Parade Association did not respond to an interview request.