BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The Bakersfield Christmas Parade is Thursday and will bring thousands to get in the holiday spirit and watch around 100 entries stroll down the streets of downtown Bakersfield with Christmas themed floats, light displays, and marching bands among other things.
For some, today's rain didn't help with the float-building process.
"So for whatever reason, mother nature likes to make it difficult on us and every year it rains the day before...And we have to dismantle everything and then rebuild," said Morgan Sokolow, who has two floats in the parade.
Her two floats will represent Sport Clips haircuts and another for Pet Matchmaker Rescue.
"One is my business, one is my full-time hobby," she said.
The two floats were near completion last night when wet weather caused Sokolow to scramble to protect all the hard work.
"A lot of stuff was painted so we had to make sure that it was not ruined by the rain. We had to unscrew everything and basically bring it back down to the base and start over," she said.
When 23ABC visited, most of the pieces, some made out of paper, were kept in a safe space, but they're going to rebuild it all before the parade.
Meanwhile, over at New Life Christian School, about a dozen students were getting started on arts and crafts for their float, thankfully with a roof over their head.
"They're building the indoor scene of our float, so we're going to have an outdoor scene and an indoor scene and right now that working on our indoor scene," said Ginger Martinez, Administrator for the school.
New Life Christian won first place in the church and religious category at last year's parade. The theme of this year's parade is the "sounds of Christmas," so Martinez says their float will play their version of the sounds of Christmas and show a family scene both indoors and outdoors. But they don't want to give away too many details.
The same went for those in charge of the parade's grand finally, Santa's sleigh, which is seeing some changes too.
"We completely redesigned, care of Roger Upton, we're in the process, in the final stages of getting in all assembled for this year's parade," said Greg Cronk, the President of the Bakersfield Christmas parade Committee.
Cronk wants to save the reveal for the parade, but we caught some snowflakes peeking out underneath a large tarp.
"And the whole idea really is to do something for the kids of the community, that's what it's all about. That's the entire effort," Cronk said.
23ABC is sponsoring the parade. If you can't make it out in person, no problem. You can watch it live on 23abc, on our website, or on Facebook beginning at 6 p.m.
