Christmas Parade a Family Affair : Oxnard: About 150 children and parents took part in the event, which was open to just about anyone who showed up.

Omar Gomez, 12, marched proudly down Oxnard’s A Street on Saturday, his glittery crown sparkling under the overcast sky.

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“This is fun,” Omar said, only a glimmer of a smile showing on his poker face as, dressed as one of the three kings come to visit the Christ child in the manger, he marched in Oxnard’s second annual Children’s Christmas Parade.

“I’m doing this ‘cause I want to be famous,” he added as crowds on the sidewalk cheered and waved at his church group from the Master’s Table church.

About 150 children and their parents participated in the parade, which ran for about 20 minutes Saturday morning on A Street between 3rd and 5th streets. A highly democratic affair, the parade included any child, family or group that lined up in an A Street parking lot between 10 and 11 a.m. Three adults judged the entrants as they crossed 4th Street, and parade organizer Ruth Bernstein gave out 24 group and individual trophies at the event’s end.

Originally, the parade was planned for last week, but organizers postponed it due to rain.

Amber Gardina, 12, said she and her family were glad for the delay, since they were all sick with the flu last week. Their entry Saturday consisted of Amber, brother Gino, 7, and friend Robert Springer, 12, delicately riding their bicycles down A Street pulling a wobbly, squat platform filled with Christmas toys.

Amber and Gino’s father, John Gardina, 46, marched at the back of the “float,” barking out orders on riding speed and trying in vain to keep the production together. Finally, the children had to get off their bikes and pull the platform by hand.

“We had to abandon our bikes because Dad doesn’t know how to tie knots,” Amber explained afterward, adding that John Gardina was the group’s “technical manager.”

Despite their mishap, the Gardinas and Robert went home with a trophy in the “family entrant” category.

“It’s pretty cool,” said the children’s mother Rusti Gardina, 35, with a giggle and a self-conscious shrug. “We’re going to put it on the mantelpiece, right above the stockings.”

The Gardinas were not the only winners thrilled with their trophies. A gaggle of 14 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade cheerleaders from Hollywood Beach Elementary School crowded anxiously in front of the podium as parade organizer Bernstein read the winners’ names aloud.

“Please, please, please, “ the girls muttered, crossing all their fingers and nervously rocking. For the parade, the group members had wiggled into large cardboard boxes decorated like Christmas presents and marched in two rows singing such Christmas classics as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Crestfallen when they did not win in the group category, the cheerleaders let go with a relieved yell when they realized they won third place in the “performing entrants” category.

They planned, they said, to put the gold-and-green trophy in the school office, next to the award won last year by the 1992-93 cheerleaders troupe.

“After walking in boxes, if we didn’t win it would be a real bummer,” said cheerleader Monique Simenthal, 11.