Your relatives take you straight to an artisans’ market, where every table is piled with ornaments, jewelry, woven hats, and other handmade goods. Kids line up for Santa photos, cider steams from paper cups, and you leave with more gifts than your suitcase can probably handle. The shopping continues downtown, where you pop into family-owned Harry Race Pharmacy to find the perfect wrapping paper and card to go with the gifts you bought. On your way out, something bright catches your eye and you stop to look at a spectacular Lego scene on display in their front window.
With daylight fading fast, you grab the thrifted ice skates your aunt picked up for you at Tongass Threads, a local consignment store, and head out for a hike up to the Thimbleberry to Heart Lake Trail. When you reach the lake you can’ t help but laugh, it’ s shaped like a heart, frozen into the perfect skating rink.
By evening, you’ re seated at the Sitka Performing Arts Center to watch the Sitka Nutcracker, a biannual production that you’ ve been hearing about since you landed. On stage, the Mouse King has been swapped for the Mosquito Queen, and the Fireweed Fairy glides gracefully across the floor. More than 80 local performers bring the story to life, the result of hundreds of volunteer hours poured into sets, costumes, and choreography. It’ s enchanting, heartfelt, and distinctly Alaskan, crab costumes and all.
When the show lets out, you and your family drive down the road to Starrigavan Recreation Area, away from Sitka’ s city lights. As luck has it, the skies open up and the northern lights ripple green above the snow-capped peaks. This awe-inspiring show put on by nature is the icing on the cake. While driving back to town, you pass neighborhoods lit like storybook scenes with their holiday lights and decorations.
You laugh softly as you lay down for the night, with images of the day playing in your mind: kids in crab costumes dancing across the stage and northern lights shifting across the sky.
You open your eyes the next morning, and smile as you see snowflakes sticking against the glass of the window.
CHECK OUT OTHER FESTIVITIES like Holiday Brass, an annual ensemble that boasts a full brass orchestra and special guest vocalists put on by Sitka Fine Arts Camp or walk downtown Lincoln Street, with numerous local shops brimming with holiday specials and cheer.
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