Christmas in York

Christmas is a magical time of the year for most people, and our family is no exception.  While typically, we don’t decorate or get too into the Christmas spirit until December 4th (the day after my birthday), we made an exception this year.  We wanted to take full advantage of all things Christmassy in this beautiful city before we left in mid-December.  There’s just so much to see and do in York that fitting in all of it between December 4th and 16th would have been impossible!

We aren’t really gift people, we are experience people.  Every year our family gift is a trip out of town together, no technology allowed, for a few days over Christmas break.  This year, we are doing the mother of all out-of-town trips!  But we also wanted to make sure to get lots of little and big experiences in.  The big experiences were not in our budget.  However, Jon’s mom gave the girls a very generous Christmas gift.  This allowed us to make a lot of Christmas magic happen in their lives this year in York while saving some magic for our time in Germany, as well.

Christmas officially started in York on November 17th.  The entire town was decorated, the Christmas markets opened, the carousel arrived, Thor’s tipi tent opened in the Museum Gardens, the Nutcracker trail opened, bakeries were selling all variety of amazing Christmas baked goods (rum sauce soaked stollen was one of our faves!), and Christmas music could be heard in the shops and around the streets.  Plus, there were so many other more specific Christmas things to see and do.  So, you can see why we weren’t going to fit all this in within 1.5 weeks!

Within 24 hours of the Nutcracker trail opening, we had managed to track down all ten nutcrackers and their names and figured out what all their names had in common for the bonus.  This was such a cute and fun free activity that the city does.  I wish London did something like this!

We browsed the Christmas markets and made a stop at Thor’s Tipi for drinks and lunch one day.  The tipi was so beautiful inside.  We managed to snag a table right next to the wood-burning fire.  Again, I wish London did something like this in Victoria Park, we would definitely go!  We also walked the streets and looked at all the amazing Christmas displays and sights as well as other independent Christmas markets away from the main one.

We participated in a couple of church-related Christmas events, including a candlelit advent ceremony at York Minster and one at Trinity Church.  Trinity Church is an old church that’s no longer in use except for twice a year.  Once at Christmas (the one we went to) and once at Easter.  It is a different set-up to more modern churches, with boxes for families rather than the pews you’re used to seeing today.

The Fairfax House, a Georgian house, was all decorated for Christmas.  They had an event called A Townmouse Christmas.  In addition to having the house completely adorably done up for a traditional Georgian Christmas, they had tons of cute little mice hidden around the house doing naughty things.  You had to try to find them all and enter your name and number of mice guess in for a draw.  My eagle-eyed darlings found 291 mice.  Let’s see if we managed to find them all.  If so, we should be arriving home to find some cute little mice of our own as prizes!  They did assure us that if we won, they would mail them to us in Canada!

We went to the museum we have passes for, the Castle Museum, which has Kirkgate Street (Victorian Street).  They had it completely done up for Christmas and it was beautiful!  Father Christmas came to visit and told us all about his various lore and traditions throughout the ages.  I had no idea he was traditionally garbed in green, rather than the red everyone associates with Santa today!  They also did a Charles Dickens re-enactment of A Christmas Carol, which was well done!  They had a craft room set up where the girls got to satisfy their love of crafting by making some handmade Christmas cards.

Our last day in York was our big Christmas celebration.  Our day started with renting a car and driving out to Castle Howard.  The castle was all set up for Christmas and had a Neverland theme.  It was soooooo well done!  Each room had a scene from Peter Pan or something Neverland-y.  And almost every room had some type of audio narration to accompany the visual effects.  There was even an office room set up to go inside the mind of the author.  I cannot imagine the time and money that went into setting this entire exhibit up.  It was one of the most magical and impressive things I’ve ever seen!

After returning to York in the early afternoon, the girls went ice skating with some friends and to say their goodbyes.  They didn’t get to know them until late into our trip, which is unfortunate.  The mom and both her daughters were so amazing and we all felt an immediate affinity and connection towards them.  The girls were sad to say goodbye to their newfound friends.  Hopefully, we will get to visit with them again in the future!

After skating was done, we warmed back up with hot cocoa and mulled wine, before going out to Dyls for a quick goodbye celebratory drink.  Then we headed back home for a high tea party.  I stayed behind from skating to bake scones and prepare the tea party, plus pack and clean the house ahead of our departure.  It was bittersweet to have our last batch of homemade scones and a high tea party.

This city really knows how to do Christmas.  Our only complaint is that they do it so well that it draws massive crowds of people.  It is the busiest tourist time of the year in York.  But I completely understand why so many people flock to this gorgeous city!  I do not blame them in the least.  It just meant that we made sure to schedule as many of our activities to weekdays as possible, and we definitely avoided the city centre on Saturday afternoons!  We are so grateful that we got to experience our favourite city in a new way!