Christmas Lantern Parade.
Each year at about this time Bath’s Holburne Museum organises a Christmas Lantern Parade; local schools make lanterns and Bath Spa University build the larger ones. This year’s parade had a maritime theme with sharks, mermaids, sea horses, jelly fish, lots of little fishes and an elephant. Together with drummers and hordes of people it was a terrific evening and a traffic nightmare.
20 November 2014
The Sixwheeler Chronicles 
What a fabulous idea. I’ve never heard of a lantern parade. This would be an amazing idea for my small town as it houses one of the premier schools for engineers. I can imagine the floats they would come up with!
They’ve done this in Bath for about the last eight years and, I have to say, it really was great; we didn’t go last year as it was raining which can always be a problem in this county at this time of year!
It was so much better than I had expected and the enthusiasm of the crowds was tangible, specially from the children. Lots of local schools get involved and their pupils make small lanterns for the parade; thankfully LED lights have taken over from candles these days so no children get roasted. The big models, there was a four man shark, are mostly made by one of our universities although there were some independent efforts as well.
The parade sets off at 18h30 and reduces a city with awful traffic problems to a halt but it is a rolling roadblock as it processes round the city centre and finishes with a big party in the public gardens in the city centre. Our local granddaughters, 4 and 6, were there with lanterns and had a super time although I’m glad to have missed Nell (4) the next day as I imagine she was very tired and a bit “prickly”, if you know what I mean!
It has become a glorious start to the festive season here, you really should start one where you are, unless you’re under five feet of snow that is. From next week Mammon takes over with our annual Christmas Fair, three weeks of mostly the most frightful tat being sold from wooden huts throughout the city centre which makes it look like a refugee camp; Bah Humbug! On the other hand it’s one of the biggest fairs in the country and does bring an enormous benefit to Bath.