Santa is coming.

It is 20 sleeps until Santa comes. On December 5th I put my tree up and now I guess we are really into the Christmas Season. This year however, 46 sleeps before Santa comes down under, I had a dose of early Christmas cheer. Let me tell you about it.

We arrived in Adelaide on a Friday night. Earlier that day I had received a text from my daughter telling me that the next day was The Christmas Pageant Parade and would I like to go? It would mean an early start, no sleeping in on this holiday morning. I said I would love to. Now in Adelaide the Christmas Pageant Parade is a big deal. My son in law tells me it is the biggest Pageant in the Southern Hemisphere and the local television news that night reported that over 300,000 people had lined the streets to see the parade pass.

The parade starts at 9.30 am but we set off hours before that and between the traffic jams and the closed streets and the people everywhere on foot jostling to get a good position it took some time to reach our destination. In fact, people camp out on the streets overnight to get a good vantage point. My daughter had been in the city at a charity trivia night on the Friday night and when she left to go home at 10.45pm, people were on the streets, setting up and settling in for the night. I have to say also, that it was cold. There was a sneaky cold wind and even though it was November, the night temps were single figures and the maximums were less than 20 c, even on a good sunny day. Notice how rugged up the spectators are.

This reminded of the first time I went to Adelaide in the summer of 1976. We arrived in the afternoon to above 40 c temps; the dry, baking heat was quite confronting to one more used to humidity, but overnight the winds changed and we woke up the next morning to a 19c maximum day.

• 

Fortunately the parade route went past my daughter’s workplace. So we were able to park in a nearby car park, walk to her office, go up to the first floor and sit by the big windows overlooking the street, hot drink in hand and watch the parade in absolute comfort. And it did not disappoint!

I am so thankful we did this together, we three girls, myself, my daughter and her daughter. I have read that when people get into the Christmas Spirit early they are happier; there must be a lot of happy people in Adelaide.