Although we had a moan about the cancellation we did admit there was a
degree of sense to the decision - the parade is of huge electric light strewn
floats, perhaps not good to combine with heavy rain!
We did get the chance to watch the parade two nights later, with the
dubious pleasure of spending an hour and a half ‘saving’ our seats in order to
do so, and it was worth it. The Electric Light Parade is a 1970s movie-fest,
featuring floats made up to look like older Disney films such as Peter Pan and
Dumbo. The scale, and voltage, involved is truly impressive. It was on Boxing
Day that we got round to seeing the parade, and it got us back in the holiday
mood after a Christmas day that was literally a bit of a wash out.
Back to the night before Christmas however, and we spent the rest of the
evening wrapping presents and then visiting the local church for midnight
mass. The people we joined at St Boniface's, Anaheim, were friendly and the
priest made all guests feel welcome, so when we went to bed we could almost
convince ourselves that we were having Christmas at home.
Waking up on Christmas day we soon discovered that the weather had
improved, cloudy, but no rain. We also quickly realized that it was not going to
be like 'normal' Christmas this year. We spent about half an hour opening
stockings and presents, an activity normal stretched out over several days as
we tour the country visiting relatives to exchange gifts. The way we dealt with
things being different was to pretend it was not really Christmas and just treat
it like a day out in the park - a technique that worked quite well.
In fact the atmosphere as we queued up and went into a fairly busy