Christmas in Riverside

I feel as if I spent the evening on a Hollywood set. We went to the Riverside community in Jacksonville, the neighborhood where Karen and Tim used to live, and enjoyed their luminaries and Christmas decorations. This is a K&T tradition. They put reindeer ears on Truman and this year Sophie was with us in her all-terrain stroller. The stroller has speakers so Tim had his IPOD hooked up and playing Christmas music.

The evening begins at Starbucks for a tall hot drink to take with us on the walk. Then it was off to Riverside. Once out of the car and handling the logistics of setting up the stroller, getting Sophie in it and controlling Truman while juggling cups of coffee we set off on our walk.
The weather got cold just in time for the walk. It is dropping to 31 degrees tonight and it was windy. The warm drinks were a great idea. Many of the houses were decorated and a good number had their owners sitting out front wishing all the passers-by "Merry Christmas". Luminaries lined all the roads. Cars, trucks, horse-drawn carriages and trailers full of people throwing candy and beads slowly passed on the road in the crawling traffic. Many shouts of “Merry Christmas” could be heard. At one church they had a live Nativity complete with farm animals. Members of the church were circulating through the crowd with trays of cookies and cider. Truman was a hit with his antlers. Whenever one trailer full of holiday revelers passed another going the other direction horns tooted an candy was thrown between the two trailers. Some of it looked like it might hurt to get hit by the candy.

Sophie, dressed warmly, took it all in. Karen got 3 strings of beads thrown to her. Even motorcycles were decorated with Christmas lights. It was truly a festive air. I commented to Karen that if I had seen something like this in a movie I wouldn’t have thought it to be realistic.(People just don’t do things like this anymore). But here we were walking with a crowd of people (and dogs) smiling and wishing everyone Merry Christmas.

If walking the streets of riverside doesn’t get you in a Christmas spirit it is hopeless. It was a pleasant evening and for us maybe a once in a lifetime experience.

Merry Christmas!