SNAPS and SLAPS: Westlake Tree Lighting Ceremony

Seattle Lights Up with a Downer!

This is my first installment in a new feature on Blogway Baby I like to call "Snaps and Slaps" (it's like "kudos and criticisms").

SNAPS to all the sponsors of the Westlake Center Tree Lighting Celebration for having this wonderful holiday tree lighting ceremony on the day after Thanksgiving, complete with fireworks, Northwest Christmas music (including the group "Magical Strings"!), an "environmentally sustainable" Christmas tree grown on Mt. St. Helens, and gloriously cold, (but not bitterly cold), clear weather! The tree stands right outside of Macy's and the Starbucks pavilion and the Westlake Center in downtown Seattle. There was crowd of people so it was very festive, but it never got too crazy. That's what I love about Seattle -- it's big enough to have cool stuff, but not so big that everything is a huge hassle. It was a great way to start the holiday season and get a leg up on Christmas shopping.

SLAPS to the Mayor of Seattle (Greg Nickels) who chose the most inappropriate time to give a lecture on global warming. He invoked the peril that Santa and his reindeers are in due to the melting of the polar ice caps. To paraphrase Mayor McGrinch, "we know that reindeer can fly, but can they tread water?".

Good grief Charlie Brown!  All the young kids in the crowd started freaking out and crying simultaneously! What was he thinking? Whether or not you "believe" in global warming, that wasn't the time nor the place to start lecturing on it. Especially when you then looked around at all the energy being spent on the pretty lights! Either light up and enjoy it, or shut up! P.S. Is it just me, or does Greg Nickels look like Fred Willard?