How I relaxed and learned to enjoy a real parade

There’s nothing quite like a good Christmas parade or three to get a person deeply entrenched in the holiday spirit. The very first time I can remember going to see a Christmas parade it happened to be the Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade in Toronto. I might have been about three or four years old and my little brother was still strollerbound. Both my younger brother and I were fascinated by the “upside-down walking” clowns. For months after the parade we spent more than a bit of time practicing our upside-down walking, much to my parents’ chagrin. But, upside-down walking clowns aside, what can I say about those magical, wonderful floats? All of them were designed and constructed in the Eaton’s warehouse building in Weston by elves on loan from Santa’s North Pole Workshop (or so we were told). My Dad seemed to know someone on the “inside” and one year we waited patiently, late at night in the warehouse parking lot, as the floats were moved from the workshop to the parade start. Apparently, (according to my all-knowing Dad) the day after that parade the designing and constructing began for the next year. But, by the time I was in my twenties, the Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade was just something I watched on television in the comfort of my apartment in the city. I’d figured out the upside-down clowns and was less than enamoured with the inner workings of the floats. It wasn’t until LOML and I had children of our own we began making the trek to downtown T.O. to see the animated Christmas “windows” and wait for Santa to fanny on by. Of course, a trip downtown meant finding a parking spot close to the parade route or taking the TTC to Eaton’s on Queen Street. Either way, it was a chore with little kids and I wondered how my Mom and Dad did it for so many years with so many kids. To me, the crush of the crowd was frightening and exhausting. I’d lost sight of the parade magic.

After we moved to the County we avoided the “thrill” of the local Christmas parades for years. As far as I was concerned the Toronto parade was televised (by that time) in colour and could be watched from the comfort of my living room sofa. No snowsuits, mittens, boots and whining about having to pee or being too tired to walk or feeling hungry. I was a parade snob, that’s for sure, and I was passing it down to my kids. Over those “avoidance” years, I wondered how a person could get excited about a small town parade and how it could possibly measure up to my lofty, commercially produced expectations and big city experiences. How, indeed. Small towns didn’t have the great big bucks to create those mechanical, snow-covered, moving, musical, festive wonders. And then I relented and “we” decided to give it a whirl. Don’t ask why. We bundled up the kids, hiked over to Main Street and watched with fascination as the sidewalks slowly filled with hundreds of happy people of all ages and walks of life. People were out for a good time. And then, the real magic and fun began. I was instantly hooked on the parade of pickup trucks decorated with garlands and tinsel and filled with angelic kids singing carols. I was blown away by the lawn tractors and the “County Cadillacs” pulling flatbeds of wobbly trees, baby doll Jesuses and heavenly hosts of angels with coat hanger wings and halos. I swooned over the pipe and drum bands, aahed at the decorated dogs, the laughing “poop-scoopers” disguised as snowmen and elves following a parade of ponies with shovels and wheeled garbage cans. I clapped and called out to the arthritic putt-putt full of Frasers, the shabby camel with a woolly-bearded “herder” and of course, there was Santa. A Santa who knew people by name and called out to Bob and Doris and had a thumbs-up for Bonnie and Darlene. A Santa who seemed vaguely familiar, but maybe not.

Over the years my hard heart has been softened by these wondrous events. What the H E double Ho Ho Ho’s is not to love about a small town parade or three? I want to know.

THERESA@WELLINGTONTIMES.CA