No, this post is not a rerun of last week’s edition.

From the time I moved to Washington, downtown Seattle was the place to be at Christmas time. The lighting of the tree at Westlake kicked off the season. Store windows were decorated to the nth-degree. There were horse-drawn carriage rides and a brightly colored carousel. The hotels all had something special—like the gingerbread display at the Sheraton and the Teddy Bear Suite at the Olympic.

We did a number of Bellevue-to-Seattle Christmas expeditions with the whole caboodle of kids and grandkids along for the ride. Those usually included lunch and a shopping expedition and were often topped off with a live show of some kind at the Fifth Avenue Theater in the evening.

We live in Bellevue on the east side of Lake Washington. Seattle is on the west. Eighteen years ago, Kemper Freeman, a downtown Bellevue commercial real estate developer, decided to do something Christmas-y on this side of the water. To that end, he invented Snowflake Lane. It used to kick off with a parade through Bellevue’s downtown core on the night after Thanksgiving. From then on, through Christmas Eve, it included a half hour of live Christmas music, complete with plenty of drummers as well as costumed toy soldiers, snow princesses, dwarfs, etc. During the festivities, a blizzard of fake snow falls down on the celebration.

We didn’t go the first year. The second year, Colt was less than a month old. We didn’t go that year either. The following year was the big windstorm that shut down everything due to downed power lines for a big part of the Christmas season. We missed that one, too. The first time we took Colt was the year he’d just turned three. When the troop of costumed drummers tuned up, his whole body vibrated to the music. That hasn’t changed over time. Whenever there’s a band concert, his left foot is always tapping along in time to the music. And from the time he was three on, we’ve visited Snowflake Lane every year.

Eventually a trip to Snowflake Lane replaced our Christmas time Seattle excursions. Now each night two city blocks of Bellevue Way between Bell Square and Lincoln Center are shut down for a half hour parade that starts at seven pm. The drummers that used to be stationed along the sidewalks now play and march as part of the parade. And now floats are there every night as opposed to just the first one. Inclement weather be damned, hundreds of people come each night to join in the festivities. Between drummers, dancers, and toy-soldier stilt-walkers, the live cast numbers somewhere in the neighborhood of 200.

Colt is a junior in high school. He’s involved in his school’s drama department. He’s also a top-notch bowler. (In last week’s tournament, he bowled his best game ever—a 290, missing a perfect 300 by three pins in the first frame!). When it looked as though his part-time job was ending, his drama teacher suggested that he try out for Snowflake Lane. His audition went well, and he was hired to be a stilt-walker.

The stilt-walkers are dressed in toy soldier costumes. They are stationed along the sidewalks bordering the parade route, and their job is to walk up and down their assigned area, handing out peppermint sticks to wide-eyed and enchanted little ones. Since Colt is well over six feet tall to begin with, the addition of seventeen inches of stilts makes him amazing. How he can bend over to hand out candy to those little kids without falling flat on his face is beyond me!

I was there for this year’s first night performance. For a WWW—a Washington Weather Wimp—being out in twenty-degree weather with cold winds driving down the canyon between buildings was cold as could be. But when the drummers tuned up, I couldn’t help but feel a tear in the corners of my eyes as I recalled all those wonderful occasions when we were there with grandkids who were still young enough to be enchanted. You can’t ever get those times back, but I wouldn’t have missed any of them.

Thanks to Colt’s mother we managed to find a place to watch that was in Colt’s section of sidewalk. Taking a photo while he was on the job just wasn’t possible. Most of the time, when he’s passing out candy, it goes to the really little ones. But that night, girl who was a little older, maybe junior high or so, slipped through the crowded sidewalk to get her own tick. When she did so, she glanced back over her shoulder—probably at her mother—with a satisfied smirk that said, “See there? I told you I could still get one!” For me, that look was the highlight of the evening.

We’ve had a number of days of inclement weather between Thanksgiving and now, but the show does go on. I didn’t take the accompanying photo. As I said, taking on-the-job photos of stilt-walkers just isn’t feasible, but this one should give you some idea of how at least one of the cast members looks.

While I was tearing up a bit that first night, I was also very proud. After years of taking the family to enjoy the show, someone from our family is carrying the torch forward and creating Christmas memories for a whole new generation of kids and their families.

That’s the thing about holiday celebrations. It always takes a whole new generation to keep them going.