Ho Ho Choo Choo

I remember singing a song in one of the countless Christmas Pageants I was in as a child about how Christmas isn't Christmas until you find it in your heart. I would like to amend that song now as an (mostly) adult and sing something more along the lines that Christmas isn't Christmas until you find the Christmas El Train!!! I don't care how young or how old you are, even Ebeneezer's or the Grinch's heart would do flip flops and grow three sizes if they saw this coming down the tracks.

I get excited just by the thought of it. It is six cars completely decked out in twinkle lights with a flat-bed car in the middle toting Santa on a sleigh. Tacky? Yes. Fantastic? Definitely!

There hasn't been a single Christmas season since I've lived/worked in Chicago where we haven't been driving around on the Dan Ryan or downtown and not seen the Santa Express. Everyone in the car- the small and the tall- are taken over by the sudden need to follow the train wherever it goes. I do mean wherever. It truly is wondrous. (The train I mean, not us following it around, that is just plain goofy...and fun....)

This year, now that Ezra is older (I'm using that as my story...just go with it) we are upping the ante and not just going to stalk the train, but ride on it! Click here for the CTA schedule of the Christmas Choo Choo, and you can ride it too (Tiny Tim's and Little Cindy Loo Who's...)

Aside from the sheer eye candy of the train, the transit workers dress up as elves and hand out candy canes. Speaking of the transit workers, they decorate the whole kit-and-caboose (ha) on their own time, with their own decorations. How great is that? So poo-poo to the whos who try to rain on our Christmas Train!

The inside is decked out as well.

So come on, All Aboard!! Its just too good to let it pass you by....

Click here and here for some video of the train in action...I dare you not to smile.