Christmas Parade! by Ree

Our town had its Christmas parade Saturday night, and it was an explosion of quaintness!

 
The Merc was open, and we’d just gotten all the lights working the day before. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure how far to go with the lights—just the first floor? Should we do the second floor, too? Should we have flashing lights? Colored lights? Reindeer flying out of the roof? Haha.

I didn’t know how Griswald to go, so we decided to stop here and we can always do more next year.

 
The city had Christmas music playing on the loudspeaker in the middle of town, and it was everything a smalltown Christmas parade should be.

Bing Crosby is my life this time of year. Johnny Mathis, too!

 
And Andy Williams is totally my jam.

 
Our residents really went all out on the floats! Loved this one.

 
I was upstairs in The Merc for part of the parade, and it was fun to watch it from this view.

 
We had Christmas shoppers in the store, and they watched out the windows, too.

 
We have heat lamps outside for the brave souls who wanted to see the parade up close and personal.

 
It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Even though I haven’t bought a single Christmas gift yet. I would like to blame this on opening the Merc and being busy…but very rarely have I bought any Christmas gifts this early in December on any given year. Instead of acknowledging that this is disorganization and procrastination on my part, I would rather chalk it up to my love of last minute Christmas shopping and the fun last minute gift wrapping. Also—and this is true—I find that if I start Christmas shopping too early, I wind up overbuying because I still want to have that last minute Christmas shopping experience.

So my disorganization and procrastination is actually GOOD, is what I’m saying.

(Holiday rationalization at its finest!)