VIDALIA — It was last but not least, and residents of the City of Vidalia and of the area as a whole flocked to Carter Street Sunday afternoon for one last weekend Christmas parade.

Parade lineup began at Vidalia Upper Elementary, but anyone passing over the Mississippi River bridge would have seen a parade line that went up one side of the levee and down the other.

Waiting in one of the present-shaped seats of the D.A.R.E. train near the front of the line before the parade, Amelia Tucker, 11, couldn’t help grinning.

“This is my first time riding in it,” she said. “I’m excited.”

Meanwhile, sitting on the last parade float — the Santa float, parked on Laurel Street away from the rest of the parade — Lee Ann Fuqua, 10, said she had her own reason to be happy.

“I’m excited it’s not freezing,” she said.

Next to her on the float, Landon Davis, 7, was waiting quietly in anticipation.

“I like the music and throwing stuff,” he said. “I like throwing things.”

When it started, the parade displayed a mixture of Concordia Parish’s rural and developing economic life.

Tractors followed fancy cars, and marching bands made way for four-wheelers, church floats and motorcycles, but they all had one phrase on their lips — “Merry Christmas.”

Children and parents alike yelled their season’s greetings back to the parade participants, while everyone from youngster to young at heart darted into the street to snatch up the treats thrown from the floats.

Afterward, Alexis Byram, 4, was concentrating on a sucker she had caught.

“I liked the candy,” she said. “I liked the pretty trucks.”

And 9-year-old Dana Crum felt similarly.

“I liked it so much,” she said. “I liked that we got to collect candy and the floats were so pretty.”