The Mayor's Christmas Parade, from the inside

Every December, 36th Street fills up with marching bands, fire trucks, dance troupes, dignitaries, and what feels like the entire population of Hampden in good coats. The Mayor's Christmas Parade is one of Baltimore's largest and most beloved holiday traditions. I help put it on, and the view from inside is very different from the view on the curb.

From the sidewalk, a parade looks like it simply happens. From inside, you know the truth: a parade is a logistics problem wearing a Santa hat. Dozens of groups, each with their own timing and needs, have to be staged, sequenced, and sent down the route so that the whole thing flows like one continuous celebration instead of a traffic jam with tubas.

The part nobody sees

The work that makes the magic look effortless happens weeks ahead and in the cold hours before step-off: the line-up order, the staging blocks, the hundred small coordinations between organizers, marchers, the city, and the volunteers who hold it all together. By the time the first band rounds the corner, the hardest part is already done.

A parade is a gift a neighborhood gives itself. Somebody has to wrap it.

Why it matters to Hampden

Hampden is a neighborhood that does the holidays with its whole chest. A few blocks over, the row houses light up for the Miracle on 34th Street displays until you can read by them. The Mayor's Christmas Parade is the moving, public, everybody-invited version of that same impulse: a whole community showing up in the cold to be together and to be a little bit delighted. That is worth the early mornings.

Why I help

Because showing up for the city is the whole thing I care about, and there is no better way to show up than to help build the day everybody else gets to enjoy. I get to stand near the front and watch thousands of people experience something warm and communal that I had a small hand in making happen. There is no better seat in Baltimore in December.