Hundreds of thousands of people have lined Adelaide's city streets in perfect weather for the annual Christmas Pageant.

Floats and performers, including clowns, marchers and bands, made their way from South Terrace to North Terrace, where Father Christmas will take up residence in the Magic Cave, in a city retail store, until Christmas Eve.

The event is in its 83rd year and the big crowd enjoyed nearly 90 floats, bands and other performers.

The busy day started in the darkness of the early hours for the drivers, who brought the floats from a suburban storage depot to the city, and about 1,000 people who dressed up to take part in the parade started their busy morning with breakfast in the city parklands.

The Christmas parade set off at 9:30am as Sir Edward Hayward's original gold whistle was blown to mark the official start.

After the floats and characters reached North Terrace, singer Rob Mills performed a medley of Christmas carols for the crowd, backed by the Australian Girls Choir.

Pegging socks to a Hills clothes hoist was a novel Adelaide fundraiser which aimed to set a world record. ( ABC News: Isabel Dayman )

Father Christmas climbed down from his float and told the delighted crowd that the festive season was all about love.

Some of the pageant clowns, elves and fairies then headed to the Women's and Children's Hospital at North Adelaide to share a little of the parade's excitement with children who were too sick to attend.

As the crowd started to disperse after the pageant, some people headed to nearby Elder Park to take part in a world record attempt to hang 70,000 socks from 70 Hills Hoist clotheslines.

The Hills Group, which invented the famous clothes hoist, held the world record bid as a fundraiser for pancreatic cancer research.

"We made history by inventing the Hills Hoist seven decades ago and for our 70th birthday we want to make history again by setting a world record for the most number of socks hung on clotheslines," Hills chairman Jennifer Hill-Ling said.