On a typical day on Fifth Avenue, folks brush past one another hurriedly. But on Easter, the city’s greatest shopping boulevard and tourist Mecca becomes a quaint and charming Main Street USA.

On Easter Sunday, people from all over the city come together, talking, joking, and taking photographs with one another, even if they are strangers.

What creates the intimacy? It isn’t so much the religious context of the holiday – people of all faiths are welcome here. It’s what’s on people’s heads.

Ostentatious toppers make great icebreakers – and the more unusual the better. Fresh flowers drew nods of approval, but Beata Okurowska’s colander sprouting peacock feathers drew lots of wows. Another head-turner was Patricia Bramsen. She and her daughters balanced metal coils on their heads – their “spring bonnets.”

New Yorkers like attention, and if you have the right hat, this is where you can get it. “I love anytime I can show off,” Pat Molle, a painter who designed hats for both herself and her husband, said. She made hers by decorating a lazy Susan. Her husband’s showed off their collection of Pez dispensers.

Lots of people were striving for altitude. Michael Andria, an 11-year-old who attends Berkeley Carroll School in Park Slope, achieved height by attaching a pinata on top of a sombrero. Then he put fabric all around it and started adding Olympics art.

Where were you, Martha Stewart? You would have been proud of how these New Yorkers handled their glue guns.

A group of women calling themselves the City Chicks had a publicist at their side passing out “City Chicks” pins and coordinating photo shoots with tourists. Their ambition? “To be greeted as the best hat-makers,” Jodie Trapani said. The City Chick look features cracked eggshell bonnets and trench coats in bright colors. This year’s yellow coats and handbags came from the Gap.

“What a bunch of eggheads,” an onlooker quipped.

There were six Pooles at the parade, wearing hats by Kathy Poole of Indianapolis. Most were wide-brimmed and adorned with flowers, but not the one Mrs. Poole made for her husband, James. It consisted of construction paper and pipe cleaners. “I’m the ugly duckling,” Mr. Poole explained. After the parade, the family planned to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, working up an appetite for Easter dinner – ham, pea soup with parmesan, and lemon-meringue pie – at Denise and David Poole’s home in TriBeCa.

For some, it’s a pet affair. A lawyer who lives on the Upper West Side, John Jeannopoulos, brought his 11-year-old pug, Maggie, to the parade, accompanied by Maggie’s best friend, Tibby, a pug belonging to television writer Doug Shannon of Hell’s Kitchen. Veterans of the parade included Sonja Hilmer, 5, of South Salem, who has been showing off her fancy hats on the avenue since she was 2; and David and Sarah Liston, who make their annual stroll in brightly colored vintage attire. Ms. Liston wore a papier-mache butterfly pin by 1960s designer Enid Collins, best known for her handbags. The couple planned to have Easter dinner at Artisanal.

Brian Stewart and Stephanie Krieger didn’t wear hats, but their elegant attire made them stand out anyway. The couple was heading to Easter dinner at Harry Cipriani.

First-time paraders Heidi Beaver, an illustrator, and Richard Emery, a physicist, are longtime devotees of the Halloween Parade in the Village. The couple came to New York from Minnesota 11 years ago and resides at Windsor Terrace.

Other first-timers were artists Dennis and Alethea McElroy and their child, Kainoa. The Manhattan family went all-natural with their hats. Mr. McElroy had a sole carrot sprouting out of a knit cap. Alethea wore a Statue of Liberty carrot crown, and Kainoa – who enjoys eating small chunks of carrots – had a few carrots tied onto his sleeper. “Next year,” Ms. McElroy said, “we might go to the next level.”