December 25, 2005

• A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS

  When I was eight to eleven years old (Back before World War 2) Christmas was a strange time for my family. My father was responsible for organizing some of the first Christmas boat parades, these on Christmas Eve each year in and around Miami Beach. He also supervised the decorations of many of the yachts. In those days a yacht was a yacht (most of them over 90 feet long) though there were smaller boats in the parade.
  Planning and work on the decorations and lights started in July, but Christmas Eve was the big night. The owners threw parties on the boats during the parade so it was almost as raucous as a Mardi Gras parade. As the parade route was almost all up and down the extensive waterways that lace the Beach, past estates themselves decorated with the lights of the era, It was something to see. there were a few points where the public could see the parades but the paraders were mostly out to impress each other, at least that's how a child saw it. The parade went on until the wee hours of Christmas morning, so Christmas at our house was always pretty late getting started.
  Those parades were sponsored by the Committee of One Hundred, a Miami Beach Men's club with quite a list of millionaire members. As well as being Marine Inspector for the beach, my father worked for this club (as a matter of fact, I grew up living on the rather extensive club house grounds in the middle of downtown Miami Beach). All this has been gone for many years, the clubhouse site is now overrun by one of the Beach's busiest streets.
  Other places now claim to have the "oldest" of "first" marine Christmas boat parades, all of them dating from after the war, but I remember those early ones.

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