Christmas parade 2012

The annual Christmas parade made its way through town tonight. It had a lot of entries and a large, appreciative audience. I decided that it would be easier to photograph it if I went to the staging area by the now abandoned Monnett School and take pictures while there was still daylight.

Trinity United Methodist has in the past had living nativities. This year they put the living nativity into the parade with a series of units. Floats had the Annunciation and Nativity. Then a walking unit represented the shepherds. When I saw them getting ready, I thought they might put the sheep on a float and wondered what would happen if one jumped off. But the sheep walked.

 The Rensselaer Urban Forestry group had kids dressed as characters of the Dr. Seuss story, The Lorax.

 My gripe about The Lorax is that it misses the chance to explain that the trees were all cut down because no one owned them. The situation it presents is a case of what economists call the problem of the commons. It is a widespread problem, but often can be easily solved by a proper definition of property rights. In fact, most economists who study the issue argue that the earliest forms of private property, the domestication of animals, was a response to the problem of the commons.

Strack and Van Til had a fancy float. The people with it gave out glow sticks, which may have been even more popular than the candy that was in abundance.

 I was startled to see a self-propelled sleigh coming down the street, driven by characters from Winnie the Pooh.

 It had a companion vehicle, a boat that sailed on land driven by a reindeer.

 Both were part of an entry from Winter Wishes Wonderland, a group from Kentland. Their website is here. Looks like Kentland has quite an event on Christmas Eve.

 A couple of friendly chipmunks from the group waved.

 A group of motorcyclists were in the holiday spirit. (Update: I found out Sunday that the reason the chipmunks were waving at me is that they knew me. I would have recognized them too if they had not had chipmunk suits on.)

Next year the building in the background will no longer be in the background.

At the end of the parade were some horse units. It is always nice to see some horses in a Rensselaer parade even if they are the size of dogs--it reflects our rural setting.

 The final unit was Santa himself. His eight tiny reindeer had eaten some bad feed and had to be replaced by a horse. The picture is not very clear because the light was starting to fade.

As I was talking to Santa and his driver, a woman came by to announce that the front of the parade was moving. I was able to get downtown in time to take a picture of the long line of loud fire trucks that were at the front of the parade.

I took a few other pictures, but they did not come out as well as those I took while there was still daylight.