Georgetown Delaware Return Day: Two Rival Traditions United

"Over the years, the two events came together and have been part of Return Day for as long as people can remember."

That's how Jim Bowden, vice president of the Return Day committee, described it to the Cape Gazette. The "two events" he means are the ox roast and the parade, and what he's saying, once you sit with it, is stranger than the postcard version of Georgetown's most famous day. The ox roast and the parade didn't start together. For a long stretch of Return Day's history, they belonged to opposite parties, and which one you got depended on who won.

If the Democrats took the most races that cycle, Sussex County got an ox roast and free sandwiches. If the Republicans won, the county got a parade instead. Somewhere along the way, both parties started getting both things, and the split disappeared into what now reads as one seamless, seven-generation-deep tradition. Most write-ups of Return Day treat the ox roast and the parade as a single package that's always existed together. They didn't. What looks like unbroken continuity is actually a merger, and the fact that nobody in Georgetown talks about it that way anymore is part of what makes the day work.

A Party For Whoever Won

The origin of Return Day goes back further than the parade or the ox roast. In 1791, the Delaware Legislature moved the Sussex County seat inland to the new town of Georgetown and required that all votes be cast there on Election Day. For residents scattered across the county, that meant a trip on roads that were barely more than dirt tracks, and once you'd made that trip to vote, the only way to find out who won was to make it again two days later, when the results were announced. That second trip is where the name comes from. You returned to hear the returns.

Voting districts were created across the individual hundreds in 1811, which meant residents no longer had to travel to Georgetown just to cast a ballot. But the Board of Canvassers, presided over by the sheriff, kept meeting in Georgetown two days after the election to certify the county tally, and the crowds kept showing up anyway. By the time a 19th-century Delaware historian described the scene, Return Day already looked like a full carnival, with booths near the courthouse selling everything from oysters to rabbit meat. The ox roast and the parade grew out of that same instinct: whoever won got to celebrate publicly, in the county's own front yard, in whatever form their party favored.

Two Days, Not One

Return Day still runs on a fixed rule: it always falls on the Thursday two days after a general election, and it only happens in even years. That mechanic is worth seeing in practice rather than in the abstract. In 2024, Election Day landed on Tuesday, November 5, and Return Day followed on Thursday, November 7. This cycle, Election Day falls on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, which puts Return Day on Thursday, November 5, 2026. The Town of Georgetown has already confirmed both dates on its own office-closure calendar, with municipal offices shutting down for both.

The two-day gap hasn't moved since 1811. What has moved, cycle to cycle, is everything built around it.

What Actually Happens on the Circle

The modern event runs across parts of two days, and the pieces have accumulated the way most long civic traditions do, one addition at a time. In recent cycles, the pattern has held roughly steady:

• Wednesday evening opens the ox roast itself, with a steer set on a rotisserie on the Circle before the sandwich giveaway, plus music and early gatherings around downtown.
• A reception for candidates and invited guests takes place at Delaware Technical Community College before the parade begins.
• The parade itself, the largest in Sussex County, runs roughly a mile through downtown, with winners and losers traditionally riding together in carriages, antique cars, or convertibles, though some candidates walk the route instead.
• Ceremonies on the Circle follow immediately after the parade. The Sussex County Sheriff certifies results, and the town crier reads the returns from the courthouse balcony, a role Kirk Lawson has held for years.
• The ceremonial hatchet burial happens on that same stage, with the Sussex County chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties plunging a hatchet together into a box of sand carried in from Lewes, the county's original seat before Georgetown took over in 1791.
• Free ox roast sandwiches are handed out in front of Chancery Court, at no charge, for as long as supplies last.
• The night closes with the Georgetown mayor's reception at the Fire Hall, by tradition offered as the day's last word.

There's a second layer to Return Day that doesn't show up on any official schedule. Bowden has described how downtown law offices close up for the day and throw open their doors instead, turning the day into what he calls libations and good will running from morning into night. It's an unofficial tradition sitting on top of the official one, the same pattern Return Day has run on since the beginning: informal customs hardening into fixtures nobody planned.

The Circle Wears Something New This Year

Georgetown's Circle has carried this same ritual since the 18th century, but the ground itself changed recently. The town completed a new public art installation there this year, patriotic crosswalk art tied to the America250 celebration marking the country's 250th anniversary. It's a small addition against two and a half centuries of use, but it means the parade route this November runs over pavement that looks different than it did during the last Return Day in 2024.

A few blocks from the Circle, the town's Marvel Carriage Museum holds a collection of historic carriages, some of which are pressed into service for the parade itself, along with other restored structures and artifacts tied to Georgetown's history. The vehicles that carry this year's winners and losers around the Circle aren't rented for the occasion. Some of them live in that museum year-round, waiting for the next even-numbered November.

The Hatchet Still Gets Buried

The plunge into the sand box is the part of Return Day that gets photographed most, and it's easy to read it as pure theater, a bit of political stagecraft performed for the cameras. But it's worth remembering what that gesture is standing in for. It's the moment two parties that once ran entirely separate victory celebrations, one built around a parade and one around a roast, agreed to fold both into a single day that belongs to the whole county rather than to whoever happened to win. The hatchet gets buried in sand that was carried up from Lewes on purpose, a nod to the county seat Georgetown replaced back in 1791. Return Day has spent over two centuries turning a rivalry into a shared civic habit, and the sandbox on the courthouse steps is where that turn happens in public, once every two years, on the Thursday after the votes are counted.

If you're walking the parade route on November 5, look for the new crosswalk art at the Circle before the crowd fills in around it. Linda Rosatelli has spent years working alongside Sussex County's small-town rhythms, Return Day included, and if you have questions about what's happening in Georgetown's housing market beyond this particular Thursday, Linda Rosatelli is always glad to talk.