My sister Susan and I decided to attend the 26th Annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in downtown Stuart, Florida yesterday evening. It was not Rockefeller Center, but it was a lot easier to get to, being only a mile and a half from our condo. Although the parking situation was probably about the same. These events in downtown Stuart are very well attended, meaning that I have given up trying to find any parking in the actual downtown area. Best just to accept reality and head east down Osceola Street until you find an open space, and walk back, which is exactly what we did. The event took place from 4:00 until 7:00, and as expected, there were a lot of people there, some of whom can be seen in the photograph on the left.
The stars of the show were, of course, Santa and Mrs. Claus, who were doing a box office business meeting and greeting and asking what seemed like the entire child population of Martin County what they wanted for Christmas. And yes, that old pickup truck seen in the photograph on the right appears to be the vehicle the Clauses arrived in, with wrapped packages in the back. Of course, there is no snow down here in the winter, and so I guess it makes sense. Kind of.
This event is also known as the 26th Annual Christmas on Main Street and has been hyped as such over the past week by CBS12 News, out of West Palm Beach, which would be livestreaming the tree lighting and "kicking off the holiday season with small-town charm and big-time festivities," as stated on their website. Evidently the anchors covering the event, as seen in the photograph on the left, are Jim Grimes and Liz Quirantes. There was a roaming reporter around somewhere named Tiffany Rizzo, but she evidently didn't roam around us. Susan and I left before the lighting of the trees, but I saw it on the 11:00 P.M. WPTV Channel 5 newscast. Evidently reporter Cassandra Garcia was there covering the story, too. Now she I would have actually recognized, but we missed her. What a bummer.
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