Holiday Hats
December 6, 2009

Friday night was the world-renowned State Street Holiday Parade. As the most junior Dedicated Staffer in the organization, I was delegated to the task of counting the number of Santa hats in the parade. With my clicker in hand, and the weight of the entire annual hat count on my shoulders, I ventured into the cold night to seek my fortune. And of course, to tally it. The parade was a long one this year, filled with the regulars: all of the high school and junior high bands, as well as their cheerleaders and dance teams, the fire trucks, the local businesses, and last but not least those Scottish guys with bagpipes and kilts.

However, there must have been numerous newcomers, because a dedicated friend I saw working crowd control confided in me that the parade this year was much bigger than last year. Although the parade stretched on maybe a little longer than would be desirable, especially for someone squinting into each group of children marching by wondering, "is that a Santa hat or an elf hat," it was overall a night of good cheer and holiday spirit. The streets were packed with holiday onlookers, seasonal music blared through the air and downtown Santa Barbara was all a-bustle. The final tally on the number of Santa hats in the parade came out to a cool 906.

Below is the graph show all of the Edhat parade counts over the years. As you can see hats were off this year.

Back in the days when we had only 1,500 subscribers, over 200 subscribers would play the Edhat daily contest. Now we have over 7,000 subscribers, and this week only 22 guessed. And because of the low numbers, the winner this week is the same person who won the last contest we had. With a guess of 877, PN2865 adds another t-shirt to his/her collection.

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