Would You Believe There Is A Christmas Parade In Waikiki Beach!?
A few times, myself and a couple of friends have spent Thanksgiving Weekend in Hawaii.
We’re all single and there’s not much going on here in the Los Angeles South Bay Beach Cities where we live that time of the year, so why not head off to a tropical paradise?
On a late Friday afternoon, we were sitting in Duke’s Waikiki (naturally) having a couple of cocktails (naturally) when we heard the staff talking about a parade.
“Oh, there’s a Thanksgiving parade!?,” we asked.
“No,” our waitress replied. “A Christmas parade!”
What? A Christmas parade on Thanksgiving weekend? Well, what the heck, right? When in Rome, so to speak…
So we went outside to check it out and sure enough, people were lining up along the main road in Waikiki Beach (Kalakaua Avenue, right outside of Duke’s and the beach-front hotels). Not wanting to see the parade sans drinks, we went over to the ABC Store (this took about 10 seconds; there are something like 85 ABC Stores in Waikiki Beach) because I knew they sold mini bottles of booze like you get on airplanes.
I got a couple bottles of rum and a soda – my friends preferred vodka – and we made drinks and watched the parade.
We learned the parade is to honor Pearl Harbor victims and it has a definite military look to it. There are also marching bands – including a few from from the mainland – hula dancers an, of course, Santa.
The torch-lit parade goes from Fort DeRussy Park to Queen Kapiolani Park and covers 1.5 miles. So it’s not exactly the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, but it’s not freezing cold, either. I don’t know about you, but I would rather be in Waikiki Beach than New York City this time of the year.
In addition to the parade, groups take part in a wreath laying ceremonies at the USS Arizona Memorial and there are commemorative performances in Pearl Harbor at the USS Missouri Battleship.
Had we not overheard our servers talking about the parade, we would have completely missed it because we would not have known about it. And, I daresay, many visitors to Waikiki Beach are now aware of it, either.
Happy Thanksgiving Weekend and here’s a thank you to the Pearl Harbor victims and veterans. We’ll toast a drink to you (actually we did during and after the parade).
Okole Maluna!
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