By Ruth Ann Ruiz
The Post Newspaper Features Editor
Galveston’s Blue Santa parade was a success. Participants donated more than 1000 toys to the police department’s Blue Santa program. It was also an amusing, delightful kaleidoscope of a parade filled with all that Galveston is known for.
Leading the parade were mounted police officers and shortly following them was the well-known Tutu Live Krewe. The ladies adorned in red and white tutus, knee-high black boots and other wearable Christmas accessories danced and pranced down the streets of town.
Gulf carts decorated from their bottoms to way beyond their tops were popular and numerous. Jeeps and floats drawn by pickup trucks were part of the kaleidoscope. All were decked out in Christmas décor.
Santas and Mrs, Clauses were plentiful, as were Grinch look-alikes and islanders were treated to Miss Teen Texas USA. She wore a tiara as she rode a convertible with the roof open and waved to the crowds lining the street.
Plastic beads were, naturally, part of the evening, and other plastic trinkets were thrown out to children and adults as well. Christmas pirates with candy cane swords and dogs decorated with Christmas lights, drill teams and marching bands all added to the parade’s array of amusement.
As the floats rolled by, there came the Ghost of Christmas Past on a float representing Shriners Hospital. On it sat Julian and Rocio Quiceno with their nephew, Sebastian and young son, Samuel.
The couple was featured as a Christmas family in The Post Newspaper two years back. They had just learned of their future baby, the day that I interviewed them. Both continue with their respective careers as nurse practitioners, she at Shriners Children’s Texas and he at the University of Texas Medical Branch. But they have added a twist to their lives.
Rocio is attracting a social media following by sharing their journey into the Victorian era through their home’s history and all that she has learned about the period in which it was built. Rocio reported that the outfit she selected for her son to wear in the parade is a vintage Victorian ensemble that came to him all the way from London.
Of all the treats in the world and especially at Christmastime, the children riding on the Shriners float were immersed in their Tootsie Pops.
Blue Santa was not on a motorcycle, nor did he seem to be a person in a costume. He finally appeared toward the end of the parade perched on the Lighthouse Charity Team’s float. Lighthouse Charity was a sponsor of this year’s Blue Santa parade.
It was a balmy evening for an artful parade that celebrated Christmas in the whimsical manner of parades on Galveston Island. If a reminder was needed of the sacredness of the season, it could be found in the fully lit up stained glass windows of St Mary’s Cathedral Basilica.
