Lights, fireworks and eggnog

Ready or not, here comes your holiday season.

The joyful Christmas cruises at The Coeur d'Alene Resort are already afloat, and you can read all about 'em in ads running just about every day in this newspaper. A word to the wise: When Santa calls out all the names of good boys and girls on his list? If your son or daughter isn't on there, that's your cue to seriously lobby the big guy. We hear that cookies and milk on Christmas Eve do wonders.

The Really Really Big Deal, however, takes place in downtown Coeur d'Alene the day after Thanksgiving. Black Friday is actually Bright Friday, starting with a fun if frigid parade along Sherman Avenue. As you might expect, Santa bats cleanup - another lobbying opportunity, maybe? - and his presence at the end of the parade signals the beginning of further festivities.

Around 6 p.m., an estimated 30,000 revelers will do their best Whos from Whoville impression, singing Christmas carols you can understand while trying desperately to keep their candles lit. Then Brad Hagadone, president of Hagadone publishing and media, and guest of honor Rod Jessick, chief executive chef for Hagadone Hospitality, will lead the multitudes in a countdown of locally historic holiday proportions.

The dark of night will be shockingly illuminated when the first of 1,200 fireworks shells erupts. The fireworks display is an annual gift from Duane and Lola Hagadone and family.

Revelers' eyeballs will scarcely have begun to adjust to the post-fireworks pitch dark when more than 1.5 million lights will blaze to life. We've been assured there are more than 1.5 million lights but confess that the newspaper's esteemed fact-checker, April Fuhl, lost count at 1,473,698.

'Tis the season to open our hearts to one another, to laugh and hug and remember that together, there's nothing this community can't accomplish. And for those cold, stressful nights when life's challenges seem to threaten the soothing sensation of seasonal bliss? That's why we have eggnog. Eggnog with a nip of something, perhaps.