Imagine miracle on 34th Street, well when you take whatever life throws at you it’s never anything like you imagine! On our travels across America, we seem to hit most of our stops on the wrong day, just after a Christmas event or just before it was to start….
We thought we were in luck as we arrived in Lafayette the day before their Christmas parade but unfortunately 24 hours of rain put a stop to that! Meridian Mississippi fared slightly better: as the doors of the train opened the carriage was filled with Christmas music and excited voices, a child shouting ‘It’s the Christmas train’ and families making a long line to enter the said decorated train to visit Father Christmas. Many of the Town and City centres were sparsely decorated, even Houston’s display, sponsored by Shell Oil, was just gold and silver lighting wrapped around live oak trees. However, as we travelled further West and it got closer to Christmas itself, more and more started to appear. It might also have been the influence of Mexican culture, more colourful and celebratory, as we hugged it’s northern border through Texas.
We hit the city of San Antonio at a perfect time. We went to a Mexican restaurant Mi Tierra, for example and it’s absolutely jampacked with colour lights and decorations. Also, there is a river walk that runs 5 miles through the city centre. This is a very accessible narrow canal like walkway which is bustling with restaurants cafés and bars – like a contemporary American conversion of Venice. At this time of year it is beautifully decorated with lots of lights, music and decorated, a huge attraction for both locals and visitors. As well as walking around a lot of people would take small boats, decorated with Christmas lights, and are transported around under the numerous bridges often with Christmas music coming out of them but also guided narratives from the boat drivers.
The small border town of Del Rio has a wonderful colourful decorations in parts of its old town, close to where we were staying, that we came upon by accident on a hike back from the Mexican border town. Decorating of houses and outdoor spaces tended to be done a little later than in Britain. We have noticed a distinct lack of visible Christmas decorations in lounges in front rooms of houses, not like the UK where we traditionally do that and have curtains open in the evening so you can look and see decorations on Christmas trees. But this may also be because of the outdoor culture here where people are as likely to be sat outside around a fire pit than huddled up indoors to keep warm and dry.
We witnessed a spectacular annual festival of lights in Austin Texas at Zilker Park. We were fortunate to be there for their free Thursday in their opening week, an evening where the park was filled with families, parents and children, many we’re sure who were there because they would not have been able to afford to all go in on a paid night. But these families were clearly loving the spectacle and we could enjoy their joy as well as our own.
In Tucson, where we are staying through the holiday season, we visited Winterhaven; a neighbourhood dedicated to decorating every house and garden for the season. It is a massive event that attracts thousands of visitors walking through the closed to traffic streets to see house after house decorated to perfection celebrating a different theme of their own choice.
The other interesting thing is the weird Disneylandesque theme of characters that appear in front yards, Winterhaven and Zilker Park, with lights and inflatables that are often actually deflated, lying like oversized discarded plastic carrier bags on front porches! They are generally not traditional characters such as Santa, Christmas angels, wisemen, Shepherds or nativity scenes. They tend to be characters from movies a lot of Star Wars, grinches, and gremlins. A secular celebration of the holiday season..
