In winter, Vermonters can be like the boy and girl in Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat: a little bored, a little restless and entirely unsure what to do with themselves. Where’s a whimsical, troublemaking feline when you need one?
Don’t let four o’clock sunsets, frigid temps and a bit of frozen water spoil your fun. The Green Mountain State is surprisingly flush with cool stuff to do, even as the northern half of the Earth tilts away from the sun. Read on for seven essential events that bring a little light to the season of darkness.
Winter Lights
Friday, November 21, through Sunday, January 4, at Shelburne Museum. $10-65; free for kids under 3. shelburnemuseum.org
In the waning days of social distancing (i.e., late 2021), Shelburne Museum unveiled Winter Lights, the perfect mostly outdoor happening for people learning how to get back to normal. Now a yearly tradition, the event merges art, history and technology for a dazzling array of light installations under the night sky. Did museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb ever imagine her stately, 45-acre center for local heritage and culture would become a glittering rainbow beacon of merriment during the darkest days of the year? Probably not, but picture the look on her face! Every Saturday (and Friday, December 26), enjoy circus-arts-inspired performances from Puppet Ruckus! and Maiz on Fire Productions.
Champions of Magic: Holiday Spectacular
Saturday, November 29, 7 p.m., at Paramount Theatre in Rutland. $45-65. paramountvt.org
Magicians — or illusionists, as they usually refer to themselves — are notoriously private. To reveal how a trick is performed is to break the magician’s code, and that’s basically treason and grounds for excommunication. Even previewing too much of a performance is apparently verboten, because the touring Champions of Magic offer only fleeting online glimpses of their Holiday Spectacular. As slick and fancy as the crew from Now You See Me, the quartet of tricksters appears to slice each other in half with a ginormous buzz saw, dangle from flaming chandeliers and skewer each other in oversize shipping boxes. And did I mention pyrotechnics?
Isaiah J. Thompson Trio: A Guaraldi Holiday
Wednesday, December 3, 7:30 p.m., at Robinson Concert Hall, Middlebury College. $5-30. middlebury.edu
If the opening piano riff to Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “Linus and Lucy” doesn’t make you break into a frenetic, arm-swinging, foot-shuffling, silly-as-hell dance, you probably were raised without television. Or a record player. For most people with even the slightest exposure to 20th-century pop culture, the American jazz icon’s score to the beloved “A Charlie Brown Christmas” animated TV special is synonymous with yuletide cheer. Even the downcast “Christmas Time Is Here,” to which the “Peanuts” gang lazily ice skates in one iconic scene, instantly triggers holiday memories. Up-and-coming pianist and Juilliard School faculty member Isaiah J. Thompson heads to Middlebury College with a bassist and drummer in tow to perform Guaraldi classics in a nostalgia-fueled concert.
KCP Presents: Grand Kyiv Ballet’s The Nutcracker
Wednesday and Thursday, December 10 and 11, 7 p.m., at the Lyndon Institute Auditorium in Lyndon Center. $18-58; free for students. catamountarts.org
No matter where you are during the holidays, you’re usually a short drive from a performance of The Nutcracker. Why? Because it’s the most awe-inspiring, heartwarming ballet of all time — end of discussion. Set to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s score, the effervescent, toe-twiddling fantasy adventure reliably elicits smiles and maybe even a tear or two. (Reminder: Most of the famous music comes from the second act, so don’t fret when intermission arrives before “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.”) The Grand Kyiv Ballet brings its production to northern Vermont for a two-night run. Founded in 2014, the world-traveling Ukrainian company is known for performances of classics such as Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Snow Queen.
Cocoa Crawl
Saturday, December 13, noon, at various locations in downtown Montpelier. Free. montpelieralive.com
For one Saturday in December, everyone gets to be Augustus Gloop. The fictional child’s gluttony overtakes him as he gorges on a river of liquid chocolate in Willy Wonka’s diabolical chocolate factory, only to fall into its filtration system and be sucked in. But don’t think about his unfortunate fate. Think about the warm, sweet nectar dancing on his tongue and filling his belly. Montpelier wants visitors to channel his spirit as it offers up an afternoon hot cocoa crawl at shops and cafés across the city. Come for the cocoa; stay for the live music. And then have more cocoa.
Highlight 2025
Wednesday, December 31, noon to 12:30 a.m., at various locations in downtown Burlington. $20-42.50; free for kids under 6. highlight.community
Just as we all do on the final day of a vacation, Burlington’s annual Highlight party crams as much fun as possible into the last day of the year. A spiritual successor to First Night, the extensive New Year’s Eve celebration that ran from 1983 through 2017, Highlight keeps the joint jumping with citywide art, dance, music and anything else locals dream up. Much of its forthcoming lineup (to be released in December) is curated by the Bright Ideas Project, which lets anyone pitch a perfect capper to 2025. Expect gatherings at ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain and the adjacent Waterfront Fest to bring the heat on a day notorious for subfreezing temps.
Penguin Plunge
Saturday, February 7, 11 a.m., at Waterfront Park in Burlington. Free for spectators. penguinplunge.org
Long before chic influencers and gym rats co-opted ice baths for clicks and clout, people all over the world found fun and fellowship by jumping en masse into icy waters. For instance, Boston social group the L Street Brownies have been taking wicked-cold New Year’s Day dips since the early 1900s, and nippy natation has been the norm in Nordic countries for centuries. In Vermont, stalwart swimmers look forward to the yearly Penguin Plunge, a mad march into Lake Champlain’s wintry waves to raise money for Special Olympics Vermont. Though it may turn lips blue and cause shrinkage of the “Seinfeld” variety, the annual spectacle warms hearts while helping athletes with disabilities succeed.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Best Served Cold | Seven events to spice up a Vermont winter”
This article appears in The Winter Preview Issue 2025.
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