It's A Green Christmas

This year marked the 29th Annual Belmont Shore Christmas Parade and its theme for this year is "It's a Green Christmas", which is to encourage all entrees in the parade to incorporate a renew, recycle, and reuse theme into every float or participant.

For the past couple weeks, Belmont Shore has been getting ready for the holiday season by decorating Second Street with lights and poinsettias.  The culmination of all the preparation for the holidays comes to a head on the first Saturday of December when the people of Belmont Shore throw a Christmas parade.  In attendance for this years parade were local celebrities like Mayor Bob Foster and City Councilmen Gary DeLong.  Also there were many high school bands in attendance that included the Poly High School Marching Band, Millikan High School Band, and Wilson High School Band that leads in Santa Claus.

In the 29 years of the parades existence, the Long Beach Junior Concert Band (LBJCB) has led the parade in fine fashion and this year they showed all of Second Street that they still have what it takes to lead the parade.  "It really is an honor to have been the lead band for this parade ever since it started," states current band director of LBJCB, Dave Schaafsma.

The parade spans just over a mile and covers 14 blocks that every participant must do twice because the parades starts on one side of Second Street and comes back on the other side.  The reason for this years "Green" theme was to pay tribute to all the city has done to improve the environment by putting solar powered trash compactors on Second Street known as Big Belly's.  Just about a quarter of the way through the parade is the T.V. area where all participants will perform something if there is something to perform, for example a cheer routine or christmas songs played by a band.  The Last Generation of Syncopated Drummers (LGSD) had stopped in formation just prior to the T.V. area and then started their "in camera performance", as best put by Fred Rawlings of LGSD to show the crowd in attendance and at home what they were all about.

This parade brings more and more people to it every year and this year was thought to have over 50,000 people in attendance with 75 entrees that showed the people of Belmont Shore a really good time out on a Saturday evening.