The Santa Parade

At the exit of Christmas In The Park we were given a flyer with an overview of upcoming events, called “be there”. Showing up on these events is good for our integration, because that way we learn what’s going on over here. On 3 December the Santa Parade was going to take place. The Santa parade was supposed to be “without doubt the biggest and most successful annual event of the NZ South Island – BE THERE!!!”. Well, that ad surely looked promising, so we went and had a look.

OK, if this is the biggest annual event, I wonder what the other events are like. The Santa Parade was a kind of carnival parade. However, without much music, without confetti and with a parade of many laaaarge gaps, a few big and many tiny carts that were mainly rolling advertisements for the local social clubs. All in all the parade was scheduled to last for 1.5 hours, but after 20 minutes we had enough… booooooring!!! We prefer Christmas in the park by miles, much more fun!

This photo is not mine (didn’t have a camera with me), it was taken by Philip Pearson in 2004. It represents pretty well what we have seen though.