Can you believe it? It's nearly Christmas. If ever there was a wakeup call to the fact that our year here in Canada is gradually coming to a close, it's realising that Christmas is on our doorstep.

We went into Toronto last weekend for the annual Santa Claus Parade, apparently the biggest of its type in the world. I'm not sure what metric one uses to measures the "biggest" Santa Claus parade; whether it's the most number of floats and participants, the largest crowd, the longest distance covered, or the most amount of trash left on the streets afterwards. Regardless of how it might be measured, there's no doubt that the Toronto parade is a big'un.

We got to see a plethora of marching bands, dancers and acrobats. We saw floats sponsored by all manner of retailers and businesses, and floats that depicted all sorts of things including Harold the Big Red Dog and Ariel the Little Mermaid. We even got to see the jolly red man himself, decked out in his bright red suit, his headset microphone, and his full set of stuffed reindeer. Yes folks, if it was about Christmas, it was all there!

In fact, there was only one float that seemed to be missing. The one for that other guy that we used to talk about at Christmas time... oh, you know the one, what was his name again? Oh that's right, Jesus. Apparently he couldn't make it this year.

Ah well, at least the department stores were all there.