“The Sounds of Christmas”. This is the theme chosen for the Sistersville Christmas parade this year. How nice it would be if those sounds were caroling, children laughing, bells ringing and other familiar holiday sounds, instead of those of discontentment of the citizens of the city. Discontentment and grumbling because the parade is not larger, does not have more bands, more floats, or more businesses and organizations are not involved. Complaints about the organizers themselves and the organization of the whole thing in general.

“Why don’t they have more bands?” “Why is it so short?” “Why aren’t more groups invited to be involved?” “Why . . . why . . . why . . .?”

Sounds of Christmas?

It is easy to complain, while standing with your hands in your pockets and watching the work be done. It is easy to find fault with others, while not getting up from your comfortable chair to lend a hand.

Invitations to participate in the parade have been issued to approximately 30 organizations in the local area. For any interested organizations, groups or individuals that wished to be included that were missed, information was posted in last weeks issue of the Tyler Star News. To date, very few have responded.

Just for the record, as far as we are aware, the offer of assistance has never been turned away by the organizers of this event. In fact, as in previous years, it will likely be necessary to recruit bystanders to help with certain aspects of the activity. As is usual, people pretend to be interested and talk a very good game on message boards, and standing in line at the local convenience store, but when it comes time to actually putting their words into action, they falter or are conveniently unavailable.

These same people can always be counted on to complain the longest and loudest when everything is over though. Ahhh, the sounds of Christmas.

“If that’s going to be all they have they may as well not have a parade at all,” a citizen was overheard to say last week when speaking of the “smallish” affair offered in Sistersville.

Our answer to that is simple: Be careful what you wish for.

Remember, if you are not part of the solution you are most definitely part of the problem.