If you're not from Kansas City, then you may not understand this. If you are from Kansas City, then you know this is pretty cool. Kansas City Chiefs running backs Thomas Jones and Jamaal Charles will flip the switch on the Plaza lights in Kansas City on Thanksgiving this year.
For those of you who don't know, I explain:
The Country Club Plaza here in Kansas City has a ceremony each year on Thanksgiving night officially marking the start of Christmas (even if Hallmark tries to tell you Christmas starts the day after Halloween). It's a huge event and there are thousands of people that attend with the highlight of the night being the official switch of the lights turning on all the Christmas lights on the Plaza. If you've never been to the Plaza, I'd estimate the size at like five blocks by four blocks so it's a pretty cool sight to see coming on all at once.
There's an honorary switch flipper every year and in 2010 it will Thomas Jones and Jamaal Charles. (Todd Haley said Jones would the first string flip-switcher. Zing!)
I will most certainly be in attendance that evening. I've lived in KC my entire life and never missed the Plaza lights. My birthday is Nov. 11 so you can ask my parents what they were thinking bringing a two-week old infant out into the cold a few weeks after I was born for my first Plaza lights.
Perhaps the best Plaza lights ceremony came on Nov. 23, 2006. That's the day of the very first NFL Network game. Perhaps you remember it: Chiefs vs. Broncos? Yeah, I remember seeing the lights flip and then sprinting back to the car to get home in time for the game.
Anyone going to the Plaza lights this year?
(H/T Kent Babb and Josh Looney)