The Magic Cave

Probably the biggest Christmas tradition in Adelaide is the Christmas Pageant. The pageant takes place in early November each year through the streets of Adelaide. It started back in 1933 and is one of the largest parades of its type in the world. In terms of number of floats/bands it is bigger than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. In terms of commercialism and blatant product placement, Macy's parade still wins though.

Traditionally at the end of the parade Father Christmas (ie. Santa Claus) rides the last float, gets off the float, is welcomed by the lord mayor et. al. and then he moves into the Magic Cave, where he stays until Christmas Eve. At least, that is what the kids are told. The Magic Cave is basically a corner of one of the floors in a large department store in Rundle Mall which is turned into the Magic Cave each year, and then it returns to being the sporting goods department, or something similar. This has been going on a long time - my Mum has memories of visiting the Magic Cave when she was a kid.

Anyway, after the pageant is over, thousands of crazed kids and frazzled parents line up for eternity to get in to the Magic Cave to visit Father Christmas, sit on his lap, tell him what they want for Christmas and get their photo taken. Ah, tradition.

For some unknown reason, Shari and I decided to re-live our childhood and visit the Magic Cave today and drag our unsuspecting spouses and offspring with us. After over an hour in line (and this was a weekday, you can imagine the insanity on a weekend) we eventually did get into to see Father Christmas and we had this photo taken.

Here are some other photos from inside the Magic Cave.

Callum's first ride on a merry-go-round (aka. carousel). And yes, that is a Christmas kangaroo he is riding on.

I mistakenly fractured one of my sister's happy childhood memories today. When I pointed out that even when we were kids, when you got to the front of the line to see Father Christmas, it forked into 4 separate lines. Apparently until today, it had not occurred to Shari why there were 4 lines. Turns out, there is more than 1 Father Christmas. Poor Shari.