CARMEL, Ind. (WISH) — In Carmel, people are celebrating the Fourth of July with junk food, music and more.

CarmelFest can be a lot of fun. But for some kids, all the fun may be a distraction from the meaning of the Fourth of July. So News 8 took to the streets to ask some kids exactly what they thought Independence Day meant to them.

“That’s when the world got created!” one boy said.

When parade festivities include everything from News 8’s own Scott Sander and Tara Hastings to Abe Lincoln, there’s so much going on it’s hard to understand why this is happening.

“It’s a big parade where you have a big celebration and you get candy!” Christian Wunker said.

No matter how close kids get to the answer, you’re always going to hear about candy.

“We can go to these parades and have all this fun stuff on the 4th of July when we became free from England,” A.J. Doria said. “Like, we weren’t allowed to have candy and tea and all that stuff back in England. So now that we’re free, we’re allowed to have all the stuff.”

But even if you can’t quite explain why the Fourth of July is important, CarmelFest goes beyond celebrating what America started as. If you check out all of the different floats and performances, you’ll see it’s really celebrating what America has become since 1776.

“Basically all the cultures that we have together to bring in to America,” one girl said. “Like, there’s a lot of people here- there’s was, like, some Scottish dudes, and there was also some people- like some very Spanish dancers, so it just all ties into American culture.”

And with 55,000 people watching this flashy celebration of America, it also goes to show just how big Carmel can feel.

“You get to see who is in your community,” Terry Smith said. “We’re all together, showing free will. Groups of people, the veterans, schools, like I said, everybody is there kind of showing what we got.”

Even if you missed the parade Thursday morning, CarmelFest is still going on throughout the Fourth of July with the fireworks show starting at 9:45 p.m.