Tis the Season...Almost

Everyone has their own timeline as to when the "official" Christmas season begins.  A lot of stores have decided the middle of summer is the time.  Some say the day after Halloween.  Most however deem the start of the Christmas season as the day after Thanksgiving.

In some cases though, it takes time to be ready to start the beginning of the Christmas season.  For instance, the lighting of the tree in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square; the tree doesn't just magically appear the Friday after Thanksgiving.  In reality, it takes days of hard work positioning the tree in the middle of the square, adding all the branches to fill it out, and adding thousands of lights

Even before the work begins at the square, the tree has to be chopped down, loaded on a semi truck and readied for it's trip to the square.  It's not just a "ho hum", (or would that be "ho, ho, ho hum in this case?), trip though, not in the least.

Nope, once the tree, (provided every year by Stimson Lumber in Forest Grove, Oregon), has reached downtown Portland's streets, the slow procession of festivity begins.

Portland police block the streets at each intersection of 6th Avenue, and provide a motorcade for the two semi's bringing the tree.  In front of the semis is a marching band playing Christmas songs.  And who but Santa himself is riding shotgun in the truck carrying the tree.

You'd think, as adults, those working in downtown Portland wouldn't get overly excited about watching a Christmas tree go through the streets at about 5 miles an hour; yeah, you'd think that.  However, there are those who still think it's pretty cool to watch, especially when it goes right by your office during your lunch time.

Those adults are the ones who go outside, and take pictures of the procession; or just watch, so they can blog about it.

Yep, you guessed it!  The following photos were taken by my co-worker, Doug Baker.  Thank you Doug for taking these so I could watch and write about it!

(Click on the photo for a larger view.)