The sixth annual Big Parade was definitely better than the one in New York City over spring break, where gloomy elephants, wearing headdresses that read “The Greatest Show on Earth,” walked down West 34th Street.

The Big Parade is done very much in the classic Oberlin style, if there is such a thing. It might make one realize how rarely the whole community is invited to participate in the kind of spectacle which many find so lovely.

The Big Parade may not be the Greatest Show on Earth, but this year’s parade showed how valuable the tradition is to the Oberlin community.

If you were standing around Tappan Square at 11 a.m. last Saturday, May 5, you would have seen various traveling couches; theatrical marching students of many heights; a spider as big as a house; two caterpillars (at least one was definitely a caterpillar, but part of the charm of the Big Parade is that you sometimes have no idea what is going on); other insects; a high-stepping peacock woman on stilts; a towering albino squirrel; various remnants of the previous weekend’s OCircus!; Kendal’s Lawn-chair drill team; and kids who dribbled basketballs with varying levels of enthusiasm.

What has in the past been called a “town/gown” affair was established by Zach Moser and Catherine Goodman, both OC ’02, in order to, as Moser said in 2003, “celebrate the community’s rich and eclectic spirit.”

This is what makes the Big Parade good art. It is multi-layered and about so many things at once — aluminum spears and charangos and papier-maché hot-air balloons among them. It is also, as Moser said, about putting community on display for celebration. This certainly happens, but perhaps the more interesting thing is the way the community changes during this day. Goodman phrased it well in a 2003 press release when she said that “spectators and participants become one as the procession’s music and energy draws people from the sidelines right into the show.” This is still true, and it speaks to more than just how fun the parade is.

All the College students and adults in the community looked, more than usual, like little kids. There were students dangling their legs out of the windows above Agave, and big grins and a typically rare, restless excitement that seemed to mix the parade into the crowds and everyone together into Tappan where post-parade festivities were located.

There is hardly ever so visual a representation of how the community and the college are combined. This accounts for the somewhat unrestrained joy of the day, as well as perhaps a need to reflect on how we function every other day of the year.

This erasure of boundaries in the community, with everyone hiding behind masks, jum[ing on couches and yelling, is inspiring not only because it makes us feel closer to one another, but because it brings us face to face with all the things that happen in Oberlin. It imparts a circus-y joy to the seriousness behind the work of such groups as America Reads and Girls in Motion. It brings the work that is being done out into the open and dresses it up in flashy colors.

Oberlin, apparently, has a history with parades. According to a piece in the summer 2004 issue of the Oberlin Alumni Magazine, in 1936, when unable to find an actual elephant to march down the street, students quickly conjured up a huge papier-maiché elephant to do the walking instead to celebrate the Republican party.

As much as the Big Parade is something wonderful to look forward to every year, with the Rotary Club throwing yellow trash bags at our feet reminding us not to litter, it also must be inspiration for how we interact with other organizations and groups of people on a daily basis.