Thinking about Thanksgiving leads me to ruminate on one of my least-favorite holiday traditions: parades.

It's not that I have anything about parades per se. I love a good Fourth of July parade. But I've never been much of a fan of the parades we get this time of year, starting with the Macy's parade and winding up with the Tournament of Roses parade.

The Macy's parade seems especially stupid, given its interpretation that we should give thanks by looking at giant Garfield-shaped balloons and hitting the stores at our earliest convenience. TV coverage doesn't help, as every nitwit morning show person gets in the booth to provide pointless commentary about what is clearly visible on the screen. Adding in all the actors to flog whatever show they're on doesn't help, either.

There was a brief time when the Hollywood Christmas parade was shown out here, but we've been spared for the most part. My fear is that we'll get some sort of Disney electric holiday fun parade instead.

For New Year's Day, I can remember a time when it wasn't 14 channels all doing coverage of the Rose Bowl parade. Many was the morning we watched the Cotton Bowl parade, with my dad adding his own pre-DVD commentary track based on his growing up in Dallas. The highlight of this parade were the Kilgore Rangerettes, a cross between the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and the Rockettes.

Now, with the lack of any variety, morning programming on January 1 takes on this either-or situation where every channel is either showing the carnage from Pasadena or is trying to sell you something. Nothing like ringing in the new year with infomercials.

Thankfully, we'll be out of the country for the new year, and thus spared the parade (though I imagine there's some sattelite channel that will probably have it, showing Britons from Land's End to John O'Groats just how silly we Yanks are). Not sure how I'll dodge tomorrow's event, but I'm planning on a combination of sleeping in and reading which will hopefully go the distance.