By Charly SHELTON

This year, the theme parks in the southern California area have gone all out for the holiday season. Disneyland offers its annual decorations and fireworks display, as well as the Haunted Mansion Holiday, a tradition for the park. And Universal Studios Hollywood has Grinchmas, the celebration based on its children’s Christmas time favorite, “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” Let’s start with Disneyland.

In Anaheim, every year around mid-November, a selective snow storm hits Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Every night, a few towers are hit and covered in snow as the decorations are readied for display. This marks the start of the holiday season for many, myself included.

Nothing quite says Christmas like Disneyland. When it’s too cold to go on Splash Mountain, so the usually long line drops to five minutes while the dark ride, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in Fantasyland whose line is usually populated by excited kids and tired parents, rises to a 45 minute wait because it has a heater in the last scene where Mr. Toad goes to hell.

Christmas time.

When Jack Skellington from “Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas” and all his pals from Halloweentown invade the Haunted Mansion in New Orleans Square to celebrate Christmas the only way folks from Halloweentown can: with a ring of “Scary Christmas” on their lips (or beak, or giant jaws, or whatever else monsters speak with).

Christmas time.

And every night, all the people in the park line up to see the fireworks go off in the skies over Fantasyland then as soon as it’s over, they all rush to get on “It’s A Small World Holiday” because they think nobody else will be there right after the fireworks.

Christmas time.

But the best thing of all is that Christmas is the time of togetherness and family. And when you’re at Disneyland this holiday season, you are sure to get enough togetherness time while standing in a 90 minute line.

Ah, Christmas time.

And Universal Studios Holi-wood is the new destination for holiday cheer as it hosts “Grinchmas.” The Grinch, that most dastardly Who (or maybe he’s more of a What) is here, and he has learned his lesson…

that Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store.

Christmas, he knows, means a little bit more.

And he’s ready to share this new joy with us,

so that’s why we celebrate Grinch-mas.

With celebrity book readings, and a nightly tree lighting,

and real snow to play in

with a cold that is biting.

So children came in,

from all over town,

to see the festivities,

and the snow on the ground.

The whole Grinchmas thing, the tree and the frost,

are already included

in the admission cost.

While this sounds like fun,

it is only right here

for a limited time,

but don’t shed a tear.

Disneyland Holiday ends on on January 3,

and Grinchmas is done

Dec. 31st or so they told me.

For a more in-depth look, tell your dad or your mom,

to go see the Grinch video at cvweekly.com.

So from all of the theme parks, and all of us at the Crescenta Valley Weekly, Happy Holidays.