Attending Stuart Florida's 25th Annual Christmas On Main Street

My sister Susan and I attended the 25th Annual Christmas on Main Street (aka The Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony) in downtown Stuart, Florida last night, and I must say, it looked like the entire town was in attendance. We headed down Osceola Street, the main drag, as seen in the photograph on the left, and the closer we got to Riverwalk Plaza, where the tree lighting would take place, the more crowded it got. It got so hectic on the sidewalk that a person next to us decided to grab hold of the front of Susan's walker and guide her through the maze to the plaza. 

Once we got there, I took the photograph of Susan on the right, next to a group of weirdly dressed people having their photo taken. I am not sure if those were supposed to be Christmas outfits or not, but what's the difference? As long as everyone is having fun, no problem. The parking lot next to the plaza was filled with various booths featuring arts and crafts, face painting, food and beverages, and other assorted things, but since there were so many people, we decided to just move toward the back, near the river, and wait for the tree to be lighted. 

We wound up sitting right behind Rick and Alli, who provided holiday music during the evening. As you can see from the photo, they were performing right in front of the St. Lucie River. There was a breeze coming off the water that Susan felt was pretty chilly. Amazingly - barely 2 weeks in Florida - she gets chilly in 70-degree temperatures. Go figure. Happily, Susan brought along her sweater and toughed it out. And as usual, they stretched out the lighting of the tree as long as they could, finally turning on the lights around 6:30. 

And of course, since the highlight of the evening was the lighting of the tree, I needed to get a photograph of it and was able to get the snapshot on the right of Santa and Mrs. Claus posing in front of the tree. There was a line a mile long to see Santa and have a photograph taken with him, and so I was damn lucky to get just the two of them, no doubt down in Stuart for the weekend from the North Pole. After the tree lighting, nobody appeared to be leaving, and so once again we fought the crowds to get back to the car. One of the festival people saw us fighting our way upstream and ran interference for us. And I must say, everyone here is very friendly and helpful. We both had a great time and are planning on attending the Christmas parade this coming Friday and the Christmas Boat Parade a week later. Time to start celebrating the holidays Florida style.