Getting in the Spirit : Holidays: As the malls overflow, the season gets under way with a party for deaf children, a parade in Camarillo and a fair in Ventura.

Around Halloween, merchants started to deck the malls with boughs of holly. Soon afterward, tree sellers set up shop on vacant lots throughout Ventura County. And since Thanksgiving, the county’s mail carriers have brightened mailboxes with a colorful Christmas card or two.

But the holiday season really got going on Saturday, with events across the county from morning to night.

“This really does usher in the Christmas season,” said Rod Franz, chairman of the Camarillo Christmas Parade, one of the day’s biggest events. Thousands of people lined a 1.2-mile stretch of Las Posas Road to watch the parade’s 110 entries.

“It’s our favorite time of year,” said Cheryl Hawes of Oxnard as she dabbed sun block on the cheeks of her fellow parade watchers: son Jason, 9, and daughter Sherri, 6.

Sherri’s reindeer-style antlers flopped in the breeze as she craned for a glimpse of the still-distant but ever-louder parade. “I like the bands,” she said, stomping her feet to make the point.

Hawes said she puts her real-estate practice on hold every December so she and her family can enjoy Christmas activities. Last weekend, it was “The Nutcracker” at the Oxnard Civic Auditorium. Saturday night they were planning to see a “living Christmas tree” presentation staged by an Oxnard church.

And today the family planned to troop over to the Holiday Street Fair in downtown Ventura.

Even that crowded itinerary missed some of Saturday’s holiday events. At the Buenaventura Mall, for example, early morning browsers included nine white-haired women and one man taking part in the annual Granny Push.

The event gave residents of the Venturan Convalescent Center a chance to see the mall’s decorations, pushed in their wheelchairs by members of the East Ventura Kiwanis Club.

“I haven’t been to the mall since last Christmas,” said Helen McKnight, wearing a red-and-green jacket for the occasion. “Somebody asked if I wanted to go on a tour, so I said, ‘Sure.’ When you’re 81, there’s not that many things to do.”

Like most of the participants, 90-year-old Mabel Owen said she didn’t plan to buy anything. “I haven’t got any money to shop. I don’t work anymore,” said Owen, a onetime bookkeeper who later gained fame as a social crusader in the Ventura Avenue neighborhood.

But Owen did not go home empty-handed. Thanks to Heidi Botelho, the nursing home’s activities director, Owen had a new pair of earrings and a bottle of perfume.

“Every year I get presents for two or three of the residents--whatever I can afford,” Botelho said as she handed her credit card to a JC Penney clerk. “I buy for people who have no family. Mabel has outlived most of them in her family.”

While Botelho played Santa Claus for some of her elderly charges, a real Santa was handing out gifts to deaf children at a party sponsored by Tri-County GLAD, an organization for the hearing-impaired, and several Optimist clubs in eastern Ventura County.

“What do you want for Christmas?” Santa asked the more than 200 children, his white-gloved fingers flashing the words in sign language.

For 2-year-old Melinda Murphy of Newbury Park, it was the first time she had been able to communicate with Santa.

“At the mall, it’s difficult for hearing-impaired kids to know what’s going on,” said Melinda’s mother, Michele Murphy, who also is partly deaf. “Here, the kids can understand.”

The party was held at the Ventura Harbor, where strong winds sent Santa’s cap flying more than once. But the winds did not prevent almost 150 people from attending the annual tree-lighting and caroling party at the Lake Casitas Recreation Area. And the weather was not expected to mar Saturday night’s Parade of Lights at Oxnard’s Channel Islands Harbor, a harbor patrol officer said.

And another tradition continued when Candy Cane Lane in Ventura opened for the first time this holiday season at 5:30 p.m. Saturday.

“We’re all lit up,” said Phyllis Gooss, one of the residents of Teloma Drive who started the custom of making the street a showplace of holiday decorations 37 years ago.

This year, she said, her husband, Glenn, added a waterfall and redecorated the little house that is part of their display.

Their neighbor, Bob Cole, said he added four animals and four angels to his Nativity scene.

“There’s already traffic out there,” Cole said a few minutes after his street turned on its annual Christmas card to the community. “It’s picking up.”