Hopatcong Councilman Becoming a Macy's Day Parade Fixture

Mike Francis was having another memorable Thanksgiving.

"Then Santa came and screwed the whole thing up," the Hopatcong councilman said.

Francis was joking, of course. He spent the holiday dressed as a snowman in the Macy's Day Parade in Manhattan, taking pictures with just about everyone. So what, he said, that the guy in the Santa costume stole a little bit of his shine.

"It's pretty amazing," he said.

Francis said it was his "fifth or sixth" year in the 2.8-mile parade. He followed the last float as the guest of his wife, Sandy, a former Macy's employee.

The best part?

Not the 4:30 a.m. wakeup call. Not the bus to the city. Not the time spent looking for his costume, then having several people help him put it on. Nope.

Not even the time he met country music icon Dolly Parton, whom Francis described as "very personable. Such a sweetheart."

"When you go by, the kids go nuts," Francis said. "But the best part was when you looked at the crowd, and all you see is a wall of people. And hundreds of cameras pointed at the same thing."

And what was that? "Santa," Francis said.

The councilman, however, holds no ill will toward Christmas' favorite ambassador. He probably wouldn't have minded being Santa. Francis said in past years he's been a stop sign, a mail box and the head of a dragon. He said the parade's costume coordinators don't give participants a choice of what they'll wear.

Will he go back next year?

"I'm going to do it until I can't walk anymore," he said.