The Christmas Season Has Arrived!

Yesterday was the day I had been waiting for since December 26, 2010: the start of our family's Christmas season.  The campus town in which I work holds its Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade on the first Saturday of December.  We've attended most all of these parades and love it.  Our day begins with hot chocolate from a candy store on the parade route, followed by window shopping and finding the best viewing spot.  Then the parade begins.

This parade comprises only horse-powered vehicles.  It may be a single horse, a miniature horse pulling a tiny cart, a group of horses, or a team of horses pulling a carriage.  The riders are dressed in their finest whether it be military or riding team uniform, cowboy hat and boots or velvet dresses with fur trimmings.  The horses wear red and green ribbons in their manes and tails and Christmas bells around their necks.  The buggies, carriages, buckboards and carts are decorated with evergreen boughs, wreaths, bows, bells, ribbons, and Christmas trees.  And Santa Claus makes his appearance at the end of the parade standing in the back of a wagon or on the back of a carriage holding on with one hand and waving at the crowd with the other.

Greetings of "Merry Christmas!" are exchanged between the participants and the excited group of viewers down the parade route.  Kids crowd along the edge of the street.  Cars are parked with the back of vans and trucks holding parents and kids wrapped in blankets and sipping on cups of coffee and hot chocolate.  Others sit in folding chairs or sit on the cold concrete planters.  We've watched in freezing cold.  We've watched while snow flakes whirled around us.  Yesterday we were under movie theater canopies and umbrellas hiding from the rain while thunder roared and lightening snapped across the sky.  Weather be damned.

Our granddaughters were enjoying their second and first Christmas parade.  One is too little to appreciate it much.  The other decided she wants a miniature horse and was excited seeing the jolly old elf, waving and shouting "Hi, Santa!"   We were joined by our daughter, son-in-law, three of my cousins, two second cousins and a friend.  Twelve of us, as in "The Twelve Days of Christmas", had a grand time watching the decidedly shorter parade in the thunderstorm and then proceeded to have a great lunch together at a local restaurant.  All in all, it was a lovely day and I can now say officially,

It's Christmastime!