Our town Lantern Parade (and switching on of the Christmas lights always takes place on the first Saturday in December. This year that happened to be on the 1st December, the perfect day for such a festive celebration. We’d picked our lanterns up from the town hall earlier in the week to decorate. So Saturday was an exciting day of opening up our advent calendars and heading to the town festivities:
There were free fairground rides for the kids and also refreshment stalls available.
Before we enjoyed the rides we needed to post our letters to Santa. Caitlyn isn’t pictured as it took her longer to get into the Christmas spirit. She really wanted to carry her lantern on a cane. Based on our recent weather we thought it was going to be windier than it was so we decided it would be safer to hold the lanterns instead.. When she saw everyone else with sticks she was very sad. She eventually cheered up when we let her “pick up sticks” at the Town Hall. The other girls still found it easier to carry theirs.
We post our letters to Santa in this letterbox every year and each year he sends the kids a lovely reply.
Then it was time to enjoy the rides and listen to the carols provided by Neyland Ladies Choir.
Later than planned, we were instructed to walk up to Charles Street to follow Santa ready for the parade. Milford Haven Round Table help make sure Santa gets to the parade on time each year. We had spotted our school sign earlier but once we were on Charles Street I kept seeing all school signs except for ours! Events like this are especially hard when you’re short! I can never see what’s going on unless I have a tall person around to tell me! In the end we just slotted in by other people from our school, the band started playing and the parade began!
It looked so pretty seeing all the glowing lanterns and town lights.
This year the lantern parade was shorter than usual, as they turned down an earlier road. This made the walk more accessible and easier for little ones. When Danny was young we used to have to shorten our walk with him due to his heart condition, then we’d wait for Santa and rejoin the parade.
Once everyone arrived back at the Town Hall, Santa made his way up to the Balcony to help turn on the Christmas lights along with Rose Gray, Mayor of Milford Haven and some lucky school children who won the competition to turn on the lights.
We all joined in the countdown and the lights were on!
Beautiful!
The girls were starting to get cold so we bought them a bag of chips to share to warm up- I think this is becoming one of their new traditions!
We then made our way to see the town nativity with the lights on. It was very busy so we’ll definitely go for a walk and visit it one quiet evening.
Here’s a little video that we made of the Lantern parade:
The town Lantern Parade was a lovely event that really put us in the mood for Christmas. We went home and had a cosy Christmas evening together with a party tea that Dave put together (it was delicious, thanks Dave).
I hope you’re all enjoying advent, what traditions do you enjoy?
Looks brill – wish they did something like this near me