A Mountain Christmas: Thanksgiving Through Christmas in Highlands & Cashiers, North Carolina
Where to see the lights, cut a Fraser fir, ride The Polar Express, sip a cocktail by the fire—and settle into a mountain house that already feels a little like Christmas.
There is a moment in the mountains when autumn finally gives way.
The last copper leaves collect along the roadsides. The air turns sharp enough to warrant a proper coat. Smoke curls from chimneys above Highlands and Cashiers, and Main Street begins to glow a little earlier each afternoon.
This may be our favorite version of the Plateau.
Summer in Highlands is glorious, and October gets most of the attention, but the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas have a particular kind of magic. The crowds thin. Fireplaces matter again. Restaurants become candlelit refuges rather than reservations to strategize over. Fraser firs grow just down the road. And the little mountain towns of Highlands and Cashiers begin doing Christmas in the way small towns still can—with parades, tree lightings, hot chocolate, shop windows, Santa arriving on a fire truck and neighbors bundled together beneath strings of lights.
Come for Thanksgiving and you can watch Christmas arrive.
And if you do it right, you don't simply visit the mountains for the holidays.
For a few days, you live inside them.
Thanksgiving Weekend: When Christmas Arrives in the Mountains
Thanksgiving is the unofficial beginning of the Christmas season on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau.
You could certainly cook the entire meal yourself—and there is something especially good about a Thanksgiving turkey roasting while a fire burns in a mountain house—but Highlands also makes it remarkably easy not to.
Local restaurants traditionally offer Thanksgiving dining, while Highlands caterers and markets prepare the sort of sides that make it entirely possible to take credit for dinner without actually spending two days making it. For 2026, The Kitchen CarryAway is offering its Thanksgiving menu of cornbread dressing, sweet potato soufflé, mashed potatoes, haricots verts, biscuits, cranberry sauce and pies for November 25 pickup.
Our preferred version?
Order the sides. Make one family recipe because tradition demands it. Open a good bottle of wine. Put football on somewhere in the background. Let the kids disappear into another room.
Then light the fire.
At High Hemlock, our walk to town cottage, Thanksgiving can feel remarkably relaxing: two king suites, a fenced yard and downtown Highlands just minutes away. It is the kind of house where the best part of the holiday might happen after dinner, when everyone changes into pajamas and gathers back around the fireplace.
The following morning, Christmas begins in earnest.
Christmas in Cashiers: Lights on the Green
On Friday, November 27, 2026, The Village Green in Cashiers becomes a winter wonderland.
The day includes the Mistletoe Market, Santa on the Green and the annual Lights on the Green celebration from 5 to 7 p.m. The Christmas tree officially lights around 5:45, and there is even a S'mores Village for children. The lights remain up through early February.
That same Thanksgiving weekend brings one of Cashiers' loveliest holiday traditions: the Cashiers Festival of Trees, November 27–28 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The event fills the Summit Center and High School with elaborate decorated trees and wreaths, children's crafts, performances, holiday shopping and gift baskets benefiting local nonprofits.
It is exactly the kind of event that feels right here—not commercial Christmas so much as community Christmas.
For families staying near Cashiers, Rabbit Ridge makes an especially good holiday base. The three-bedroom home sits only a few minutes from the center of Cashiers but trades Main Street for long mountain views. Spend the afternoon among the lights, then retreat uphill as darkness settles across the ridges.
Pour something. Start the fire. Do absolutely nothing for a while.
That is part of the itinerary too.
Highlands Lights Up the Following Night
On Saturday, November 28, Christmas crosses the mountain to Highlands.
Spend the day walking Main Street during Small Business Saturday, when downtown hosts a Cookie Crawl, live music, holiday story time, face painting, ice carving and strolling musicians. Then, at 6 p.m., gather at Kelsey-Hutchinson Founders Park for Light Up the Park & Main.
There are carols and treats, the mayor reads 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and Santa arrives—appropriately for a small mountain town—on a fire truck before the lights illuminate downtown for the season.
It is difficult to manufacture this kind of Christmas.
Highlands doesn't have to.
Go Ice Skating in the Middle of Town
One of the simplest holiday pleasures in Highlands is also one of the best.
Beginning November 19, 2026, the outdoor ice rink returns to Kelsey-Hutchinson Founders Park. Skates are available, admission is $8, and coffee and hot chocolate are sold rink-side. The rink operates through February, with expanded hours around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Go in the late afternoon as the temperature drops and Main Street begins to light up.
Then walk somewhere warm.
Hot chocolate for the children. Something slightly stronger for everyone else.
Have a Proper Christmas Cocktail at The Hummingbird Lounge
There are holiday bars, and then there are rooms that seem as though they have been waiting all year for December.
The Hummingbird Lounge at Old Edwards falls firmly into the latter category.
Upstairs at Madison's, the lounge has the mood of a private drawing room: dark wood, upholstered chairs, low light, proper cocktails and live entertainment on weekends.
At Christmas, when Old Edwards is dressed for the season, it is nearly impossible not to linger.
Order a Manhattan, an Old Fashioned or whatever seasonal drink the bartender is making particularly well that evening. Settle into one of the deep chairs. Let somebody else decide what happens next.
There are very few December problems that aren't improved by a cocktail in a mahogany-paneled room.
Watch the Highlands Christmas Parade
On Saturday, December 5, 2026, Highlands holds its annual Christmas Parade beginning at 10 a.m. along Main Street.
Expect marching bands, handmade floats, Santa—and, in wonderfully Highlands fashion, both llamas and camels.
Afterward, walk over to The Bascom, where the Holiday Market reception runs from 2 to 4 p.m. with handcrafted work by regional artists, hot chocolate, cookies and cheese straws. The Bascom's larger Holiday Market runs from October 31 through December 26, making it one of our favorite places to find a gift that actually feels like it came from the mountains.
Santa returns to Founders Park on December 5 after the parade and again December 12 and 19.
You could easily make an entire weekend of it.
Cut Your Own Fraser Fir
Few Christmas souvenirs can compete with strapping a seven-foot Fraser fir to the roof of the car.
Western North Carolina is Fraser fir country, and some of the best Christmas tree farms in the region sit surprisingly close to Cashiers.
Our favorite place to send guests is Bear Valley Farm in Glenville, where the experience still feels wonderfully old-fashioned. Look for the red caboose. Pick out a Fraser fir. Sit beside the fire with hot chocolate or cowboy coffee. Depending on the day, there may be hayrides and marshmallow roasting as well.
Bear Valley's 2026 choose-and-cut season begins Friday, November 20 and the farm is closed Thanksgiving Day.
Nearby Pressley Tree Farm, another long-running Glenville farm, also opens for choose-and-cut during Thanksgiving weekend.
This is worth doing even if you have no intention of hauling a tree home.
Buy a wreath. Bring home greenery. Take the Christmas-card photograph. Drink the hot chocolate.
And breathe.
Fraser firs smell considerably better in the field than they do in the seasonal aisle of a big-box store.
A Christmas Stop at Highlands Outpost
For a little more holiday energy, make the short drive to Highlands Outpost. In winter, the mountain adventure park leans into the season with tubing, festive lights, fire pits and plenty of hot chocolate weather. It’s especially fun with children: spend an hour or two outside, warm up with something sweet, then head back to town—or straight home to the cabin and a fire of your own.
It’s the more playful side of a Highlands Christmas, and an easy addition to a day otherwise spent shopping Main Street or lingering over lunch.
Ride The Polar Express in Bryson City
If you are bringing children to the mountains at Christmas, this is the excursion worth planning ahead for.
The Great Smoky Mountains Railroad's THE POLAR EXPRESS™ Train Ride departs from Bryson City throughout the season, beginning in November and continuing into early January.
Passengers board historic train cars for a trip inspired by Chris Van Allsburg's Christmas story, complete with hot chocolate, treats, music and a visit from Santa, who gives each child the first gift of Christmas. Many prime 2026 Thanksgiving-weekend departures are already selling out.
And this year Bryson City has leaned even further into Christmas.
Its Nights of Lights season includes downtown lights, an outdoor skating rink, holiday hayrides at Darnell Farms and a large drive-through Smoky Mountain Christmas light display running select nights beginning November 6 and nightly through much of December.
From the Highlands-Cashiers area, it makes a wonderful holiday day trip.
Drive over in the afternoon. Explore Bryson City. Ride the train after dark. Let the children fall asleep on the drive back to the cabin.
Then carry them inside beneath a cold mountain sky.
Some traditions earn their place immediately.
See 2,500 Luminaries in Dillsboro
For something quieter—and perhaps even more nostalgic—drive to tiny Dillsboro on one of the first two weekends of December.
On December 4–5 and December 11–12, 2026, the village hosts its annual Lights & Luminaries, when some 2,500 candles line the streets alongside white Christmas lights.
There are carolers, live music, Santa and Mrs. Claus, complimentary cider and cocoa and horse-and-buggy rides through downtown.
No giant LED spectacle.
No synchronized pop soundtrack.
Just candles, storefronts and a little mountain town glowing in the dark.
We would choose it every time.
Make a Gingerbread House at The Bascom
Thanksgiving Friday offers another sweet Highlands tradition.
On November 27, The Bascom hosts morning and afternoon gingerbread-house workshops, with tables of candies and confections ready for decorating. Finished houses can even be entered into a popular-vote contest.
Book this in advance, especially if you're traveling with children.
Then take your slightly overdecorated gingerbread masterpiece home to the cabin and display it proudly.
Perfect symmetry has never been the point of Christmas.
See a Holiday Show
Highlands has its own professional theater company, and December brings its annual Home for the Holidays production to the Highlands Performing Arts Center.
For 2026, Mountain Theatre Company presents A Joyful Noise, a family-friendly holiday production filled with seasonal music, choreography and theatrical spectacle.
Make a night of it: early dinner in town, the show, then one last drink somewhere warm before heading home.
Or Don't Go Anywhere at All
A mountain Christmas should never become another schedule to manage.
Leave an afternoon empty.
At the Elevate Highlands homes, we decorate for Christmas in much the same way we decorate the houses the rest of the year: warmly, traditionally and with restraint.
Think evergreen and soft lights rather than Christmas exploding from every surface.
Enough that the house feels festive when you arrive. Not so much that it stops feeling like a beautiful mountain home.
That distinction matters to us.
At High Hemlock, light the fireplace and make dinner at home after an afternoon downtown.
At Rabbit Ridge, watch the winter sun disappear behind the mountains while wrapped up watching Miracle On 34th Street by the outdoor fireplace.
At Rural Felicity, tucked into Highlands' Webbmont area, lean into the quieter version of the season—the one with cold walks, long dinners and nowhere you particularly need to be except fireside.
And at Boathouse Lane, winter gives the lake an entirely different personality: calm waters, bare trees and the kind of stillness summer visitors rarely see. Drink coca and make smores by the firepit.
Make hot toddies for the adults and hot chocolate for the children.
Put on Home Alone if the kids are choosing, White Christmas if grandparents have a vote, or The Family Stone after the younger ones go to bed.
Then curl up on the screened porch in front of the fire under every blanket you can find.
Mountain weather occasionally rewards unreasonable behavior.
Christmas Morning in the Mountains
Christmas morning doesn't need much programming.
Coffee first.
Pajamas considerably longer than is socially acceptable.
Perhaps a walk after breakfast. Maybe a drive through town when everything is unusually still.
Then another fire.
The remarkable thing about Christmas in Highlands and Cashiers isn't that there are so many things to do.
There are.
It is that this is one of the increasingly rare places where doing less still feels like an occasion.
The little towns glow. The Fraser firs grow just down the road. The fireplaces are lit. The mountains go quiet.
And somewhere between the Christmas parade and the Polar Express, between the cocktails and the cocoa, the shopping and the s'mores, you remember what a holiday trip was supposed to be in the first place.
Not another week to rush through.
A reason to stay awhile.
Planning a Thanksgiving or Christmas Trip to Highlands & Cashiers
When do Christmas events begin in Highlands and Cashiers?
Thanksgiving weekend is the unofficial beginning of the holiday season. Cashiers' Lights on the Green takes place November 27, 2026, followed by Highlands' Light Up the Park & Main on November 28.
When is the Highlands Christmas Parade in 2026?
The Highlands Christmas Parade is Saturday, December 5, 2026, beginning at 10 a.m. on Main Street.
Is there ice skating in Highlands, NC at Christmas?
Yes. The outdoor rink at Kelsey-Hutchinson Founders Park opens November 19, 2026 and operates through February, weather permitting.
Where can you cut a Christmas tree near Highlands or Cashiers?
Several Fraser fir farms are located near Cashiers and Glenville. Bear Valley Farm and Pressley Tree Farm are two of the closest options.
How far is The Polar Express from Highlands and Cashiers?
THE POLAR EXPRESS™ departs from the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad depot in Bryson City and makes an easy holiday day trip from either Highlands or Cashiers. Build extra time into your drive during winter weather.
Where should you stay for Christmas in Highlands or Cashiers?
Elevate Highlands offers private vacation homes in both Highlands and Cashiers, including in-town cottages, mountain-view homes and larger family retreats. Each home receives understated seasonal touches for the holidays, so guests arrive to a house that already feels ready for Christmas.
When should I book a Christmas cabin in Highlands or Cashiers?
For Thanksgiving weekend, the Highlands Christmas Parade weekend and Christmas week, earlier is better—especially for larger homes and prime in-town properties. Polar Express tickets should also be booked early because popular departures sell out.