The perfect buttery, sweet and savory popcorn treats for your movie nights and TV binges
Angie Lane spends a lot of time thinking about popcorn.
Lane is the Director of Red River Theatres in Concord. It’s not an overstatement to say that popcorn is the lifeblood of any movie theater, and Lane takes it very seriously. Right now, during the busy holiday season, Red River uses up a 50-pound bag of unpopped popcorn seed every day and a half or so. For Lane, the secret to really good popcorn is real butter.
“We use anhydrous butter; the water has been removed,” she said, “so it’s shelf-stable, but it’s real, actual butter.”
(Sadly, one of the cold, harsh realities of life is that the “butter” on most theaters’ popcorn is actually mostly partially-hydrogenated soybean oil, an industry salt called “Flavacol,” beta carotene — the same vitamin that makes carrots orange — for color, tertiary butylhydroquinone — a preservative — and polydimethylsiloxane, an anti-foaming agent.)
While it is real butter (minus the water), Red River’s butter isn’t something you can buy off the shelf. “One time we ran out of butter during like Barbenheimer,” Lane said, “and actually during Wicked we’ve run out of butter because there was some supply chain issue, and somebody said, ‘Oh, we can just get butter from the supermarket!’ I had to tell them that I didn’t want to kill anybody, because [supermarket butter] is not shelf-stable once you heat it up and everything. But I love it when we run out of butter. It’s an indicator that business is good.”
According to Lane, only amateurs dump the butter on the top of a tub of popcorn. “We personally layer the butter because we’re professionals,” she said. “But I love it when people ask for extra butter, because people come to the theater for the movies but they also come for the popcorn.”
“Historically speaking,” Lane said, “there’s just something about when you smell popcorn in the movie theater, like it just goes together, and I think … if you ask someone to think about a concession item at a movie theater, the first thing they would say is popcorn.” She remembers the classic intermission cartoon that used to encourage movie-goers to buy concessions. “With the little marching concession people, it’s always led by a little popcorn guy,” she said. “When you were a kid, wasn’t popcorn magical?”
Meredith Thomas spends most of her day thinking about popcorn, too. She and her husband, Ken, are the owners of Ken’s Corn in Derry, a family business that sells popcorn at farmers markets, fairs and events and through a few small retail stores. Like many small food businesses, theirs started with a face-to-face relationship with customers. ”We started at farmers markets and fairs and events,” she said. “And that’s still primarily where we meet our customers.”
The business has expanded over the past two years. “It is a year-round business,” Thomas said. “We are primarily busy from about April through Jan. 1. And then we kind of take a few months to regroup. This year we’re going to be focusing on looking at more storefronts to get into just to keep expanding.”
One of the things Thomas likes about popcorn is how versatile it is.
“We started in 2022 just making buttered [popcorn] and kettle corn as our base,” she said. “Now we have seasonal ones, like in the fall. One of those is Caramel Choco — it tastes like a Twix bar! Now, we have a Cookie Explosion, which is like cookies and cream. And one of our savory flavors is a white cheddar.”
Thomas said that coming up with new flavors comes easy to her. “I am ADD, so my brain is constantly running. But just going into a store and looking around — at even just candies or potato chips [is inspiring]. Sometimes our customers give us really great options. We’ve had a lot of requests lately for a dill pickle [flavor], so that’s on our winter menu.”
Home cooks have a natural knack for personalizing popcorn, she said.
“Before we started this business, one of my favorite snacks was to pop popcorn, either on the stove top or just the microwave bags. And then I always added pretzels and M&M’s to it, so you get that sweet and salty flavor.”
It’s easy to understand why people love popcorn so much, Thomas said. “It is a quick, easy, on-the-go snack. Young, middle-class America is constantly on the go. So they’re looking for a healthy, consumable snack that they can either eat where they are or take it on the go, running to sporting events or going to work. It also is an allergy-friendly snack, which can be hard to find. It’s gluten-free, and depending on the flavor, dairy-free and nut-free.”
Popcorn experts Red River Theatres (11 S Main St., Concord, 224-4600, redrivertheatres.org) shows movies seven days a week. Visit the website for listings.
Ken’s Corn (68 Chester Road, Derry, 208-661-0282, kenscorn.com) is available through small stores, including East Derry General Store (50 E. Derry Road, Derry, 432-5302, eastderrygeneralstore.com) and Prime Butcher 201 Route 111, Hampstead, 329-7355, primebutcher.com).
Popzup Popcorn (Canal Street Mill, 22 Canal St., Suite 358, Somersworth, 314-8314, popzup.com) sells five flavors of popcorn, poppers, seasonings and more online and in grocery stores nationwide.
The Burstin’ Kernel (facebook.com/theburstinkernel) makes hot, fresh kettle corn on the spot at farmers markets and events throughout southern New Hampshire. The Hallinans also have a new food truck, Chew ‘N’ Screw. Check for availability and more at facebook.com/chwnscw.
Julie Lapham has been in the popcorn game even longer. She is the CEO and co-founder of Popzup Popcorn in Somersworth. She and her husband started their company in 2015. For them, making popcorn is an expression of some deeply-felt values.
“Our facility is located in an old, refurbished mill on the river,” Lapham said. “That sort of reflects who we are in terms of our mission to be local and just to do the right thing, which basically is really fresh, farm fresh, pure and simple local ingredients, make it all ourselves, be sustainable, take good care of our employees, and give back to the community.”
PopzUp produces five flavors of popcorn for retail sales online and through supermarkets, but for the Laphams, selling popcorn and making it are intertwined.
“We also sell locally grown, non-GMO popcorn kernels in a microwave popcorn popper that we actually invented ourselves,” she said. “It’s called the PopzUp Popper, which is where we came up with our name. And basically it’s a reusable microwave popping box. It’s made from virgin paperboard and it’s printed with vegetable inks. It’s, you know, totally chemical-free and … reusable and sustainable.”
Like Angie Lane, Lapham is a big believer in real butter and dairy products. “What really differentiates us from other popcorn brands,” she said, “is that we use a lot of real butter, real cheddar. There really aren’t any other commercially available brands that use pure dairy. A lot of them have butter or cheddar or whatever, but for the most part they’re ultra-processed foods, which [are referred to as] UPF. It’s an actual term; all it means is that they are not real farm fresh dairy products. [Fresh dairy] is very much more difficult to work with and to protect because it goes bad quickly. Real butter and real cheddar and real truffles are very sensitive to light and heat and air. So we have to spend more to protect them and so those are more expensive.”
Using sensitive ingredients involves putting a lot of thought into PopzUp’s packaging. The bags, for instance, are completely light-proof. “It’s actually a foil-lined bag,” Lapham said, “We really need to have that foil liner to protect the popcorn. We also do something called a nitrogen flush, which basically is right before we close the bag up and seal it, we flush it with nitrogen, which is just an inert gas. It’s heavier than oxygen, and oxygen will cause popcorn to go bad and dairy to go bad, so we have to get that out of the bag, and seal it up tight. That’s just an extra effort that we go through to make sure that our popcorn is delicious when somebody buys it. “
For a family business, PopzUp produces a lot of product.
“We go through about 10,000 pounds [of popcorn] every three weeks,” Lapham said, “which is basically four full pallets at this point. But every year it’s more and more.” Early on, the Laphams decided to take a hands-on approach with their popcorn. Instead of using automated air poppers, which is the standard in the industry, “Ours is made the old-fashioned way,” she said, “but basically on a commercial level. We have giant, real kettles that pop it, and then we take that and then we put it in giant tumblers where people put the seasoning on it and tumble that, and then we take that out and put that in a machine that helps us to ensure that the right amount goes in every bag.”
In the beginning, Lapham said, their focus wasn’t on producing seasoned popcorn.
“What we did is we let our customers tell us what the fan favorites were. We took those seasonings and that’s what we used to season the popcorn that we started selling already seasoned. The first year was really spent deciding what flavors were the best flavors, what flavors the customers liked. We started with four flavors: butter, cheddar, and then two vegan flavors, Cheesy Herby, which is made with nutritional yeast and herbs and spices, and then Maple Cinnamon Toast, which has like a kettle corn flavor but it’s not candy coated, so it’s nice and snackable — it’s got this light sweet and salty mapley flavor that you can eat a whole bag of and it’s not like you’ve eaten badly. Last year we added a fifth. We added the truffle butter flavor; we buy real Italian black truffles and mix them with our butter and then put that on.”
Given how many varieties of popcorn are available, one or two types are perennial favorites. Kettle Corn enthusiasts are especially enthusiastic. Sean and Samantha Hallinan devote themselves to it. The Hallinans own and run The Burstin’ Kernel. For the past two years they have made and sold kettle corn at farmers markets and events throughout southern New Hampshire. “We pretty much operate from springtime all the way through until December, when it just gets too cold,” Sean Hallinan said.
The Hallinans are particular about the variety of corn they use. “Basically you have different types of kernels,” Sean said, “”and some kettle corn companies use one type versus another. We use a popcorn kernel that creates a very large pop; it’s called a ‘mushroom’ style.”
Hallinan said the actual popping process is pretty straightforward.
“Basically, you throw [the kernels] in a kettle with some oil. The kettle we use is 160 quarts. It is a pretty large commercial unit. Then you throw sugar in, and stir it. We stir it by hand usually; we use a big wooden paddle to stir it, or for larger events we stir it with an automatic stirrer. When it’s done, you dump it out of the kettle and you sift it through a sifting bin and salt it or put whatever flavorings on it. The sifting removes all the kernels and small bits. We try our best to get rid of them. You don’t want people breaking their teeth on hard kernels that didn’t pop.”
Kettle corn satisfies several cravings at once, Hallinan said. “I think people like the sweet and salty mix. We try our best to get the best recipes so that way it’s not too much one way or the other. There’s also a little bit of crunch to it as well, but not too sticky, so it doesn’t get stuck in your teeth like caramel corn.”
According to Hallinan, making good kettle corn didn’t have a steep learning curve.
“I saw someone doing it and got interested in it,” he said. “and then we worked on our own recipe over and over again for, I don’t know, it probably took us maybe a week or so of trying different things until we got it just right.”
Given how much care and technique the Hallinans put into making popcorn during the day, their own popcorn consumption is pretty basic. “We kind of grew up on microwave popcorn,” he said, “so that’s our default — easy, throw it in the microwave.”
Making good popcorn at home
Kristen Chinosi is the owner of and an instructor at The Culinary Playground in Derry. According to her, a good batch of popcorn starts with the oil it’s cooked in.
“I always pick a heavy-bottomed pot, and I like to use coconut oil,” she said. “It gives it a little bit of different flavor, though, so you can really use an oil that you prefer the flavor of, whether it’s a vegetable oil or an olive oil. You just have to watch how hot you have it because some of those oils have a lower smoke point.” (This means that different oils burn at different temperatures. Refined peanut or canola oils, for instance, have a high smoke point, which means they can be heated to a high temperature before they start to break down. Extra virgin olive oil and butter have low smoke points; they burn easily.)
Chinosi heats her oil before adding popcorn kernels to it.
“I like to get my oil nice and warmed in the bottom, and I’ll put a couple pieces of popcorn in until I hear it pop. I have a lid kind of halfway, you know, maybe like a quarter of it exposed when the lid is on. And once I hear it pop, I know the oil is hot enough, and then I go ahead and add the rest of my popcorn. Honestly, I just eyeball it. I put maybe an eighth of an inch of oil on the bottom of the pan or pot, and then I cover the bottom of the pot with the raw kernels; that ratio seems to work pretty well. I do like to put salt on at that time. So I’ll go ahead and salt the kernels before they’ve popped. After that, I let them do all their popping. I shake the pot. I keep it over medium heat. I’d rather it go a little slower than burn, so I shake the pot often. And then when it’s done, I either salt it additionally, and add some melted butter. You could put cinnamon butter on there. You could add some different flavorings if you wanted a spicier popcorn — some red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper. You could add a little bit of lemon zest on there for kind of a different twist that plays well with the salt and the acidity of the lemon.”
Spicy Popcorn Granola Clusters
These are sweet, peanut snacks, with a generous amount of spice on the back end. Adapted from a recipe on the Bob’s Red Mill website, this version has a reduced amount of chili oil.
8 cups (80 to 90 g) popped popcorn – I like to use pre-popped, movie theater-style popcorn that I buy in large bags from the supermarket
1 package (about 300 g) peanut butter granola – I like Bare Naked or Trader Joe’s brand
1 cup (235 g) light corn syrup
⅓ cup (78 g) Chinese chili oil
¼ cup (65 g) smooth peanut butter
Spicy Popcorn Granola Clusters. Photo by John Fladd.
Preheat oven to 250°F. Mix granola and popcorn together in a large bowl, and set aside. Lightly oil a large wooden spoon or a silicone spatula.
Over medium heat, bring corn syrup, chili oil and peanut butter to 235°F; if you are using a candy thermometer, this is the “soft ball” stage, stirring often.
Pour the hot syrup over the popcorn mixture, stirring to coat thoroughly. Turn the sticky mixture out onto a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
Bake for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, and set aside until the pan is cool to the touch. Break the popcorn mix into clusters, and store in an airtight container.
Variation: Before baking, you can pack the mixture into parchment-lined baking pans, and bake for the full hour without stirring. Before it has cooled completely, use a sharp knife to cut into bars.
Raised Eyebrows Popcorn Balls
Offer one of these excellent popcorn balls to a friend, they will take a bite, pause, take a second bite, then look thoughtfully at you with raised eyebrows, completely reassessing your potential. These popcorn balls offer a nearly perfect ratio of sugar, salt, butter, peanuts, and of course corn. I adapted a recipe from the Food and Wine website with changes in some of the ingredients.
20 cups (around 200 g) movie-style popcorn
4 cups (124 g) Corn Chex cereal
1½ cups (225 g) dry roasted peanuts
3 cups (595 g) sugar
1½ cups (468 g) light corn syrup
½ cup (1 stick) butter
½ cup (120 g) water
1 glug (1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons) vanilla
1 Tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon chipotle chili powder
In a very large, lightly oiled bowl, combine the popcorn, peanuts and cereal. Set aside.
Popcorn balls. Photo by John Fladd.
In a saucepan, combine sugar, corn syrup, butter, and water, and cook over medium-low heat until it reaches 295°F (“hard crack” stage), stirring occasionally. When the sugar syrup has come to temperature, stir in the vanilla, salt and chili powder.
Pour the hot sugar mixture over the popcorn, cereal and peanuts, and mix to combine with a lightly oiled wooden spoon or silicone spatula. Most of the peanuts will have fallen to the bottom of the bowl, so take care to flip the caramel corn over once or twice while you stir, to make sure they are incorporated.
With lightly oiled hands, or lightly oiled gloved hands, break off 2- to 3-inch blobs of the popcorn mixture, gently shape them into balls, and place them on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or a silicone mat. You will have to work fast — the caramel will be very hot, so you’ll have to let it cool a little, but will also be in a race to form the balls before the mixture sets up too much. You will end up with 30 or so balls.
Store these in an airtight container for three or four days, but they are best on the first day, when the popcorn is still crisp.
Popcorn Vodka
Popcorn has a distinct flavor that lends itself to infusing into alcohol. Vodka is a good choice for this, because it is generally neutral in flavor and will let the taste of the popcorn shine through.
popcorn – either freshly popped or movie-style from the supermarket or even from a movie theater
1 bottle of vodka – because you will be infusing it with a flavor that would overwhelm any subtleties in the vodka, a mid-range vodka will be best for this; I like Gordon’s or Mr. Boston. Avoid the very cheapest vodka, which might have off-flavors and taste chemically.
You know that hole in the lid to your blender that you’ve always wondered about? You finally get to use it. Pour the vodka into the jar of your blender, and add about an equal amount — by volume — of popcorn. Put the lid on the blender, and blend the popcorn and vodka together on the lowest setting. Once the initial popcorn has been pulverized, go ahead and add more through the hole in the lid, a handful at a time. Stop from time to time, to check on your progress.
Popcorn Vodka. Photo by John Fladd.
When the popcorn fragments and the vodka seem to take up the same amount of space, pour the mixture off into an airtight container, and put it somewhere cool and dark for two to three days, shaking it occasionally.
After the vodka and popcorn have had time to get to know each other, pour the mixture through a fine mesh strainer, then through a coffee filter in a funnel, into an empty bottle — maybe the original one that the vodka came in, labeled with the date and a short description, so in a couple of weeks, when you find a faintly yellow bottle of alcohol, you’ll remember what’s in it.
Variation: If you’re an impatient sort of person, you can speed the infusion process up by putting your airtight container in a hot water bath. Let it soak at 150°F for two hours, then strain and filter, as above. This is an excellent use for a sous vide, if you have one. Be aware that if you use actual movie theater popcorn for this hot water bath technique, your final product will be a golden yellow color, from the artificial color the theater or supermarket uses in its “butter.”
A cocktail for your Popcorn Vodka: A Caramel Corn Daisy
3 ounces popcorn vodka (see above)
1 ounces fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/2 ounce maple syrup, the darkest you can find – the darker the syrup, the more mapley it will taste
Combine all ingredients over ice in a cocktail shaker. Shake thoroughly, and strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass.
Maple and lemon are the dominant flavors in this drink, with the popcorn bringing up the rear, leaving you with a subtle popcorn flavor between sips.
Cinnamon Caramel Corn
This fire truck red corn gets its flavor and color from hot cinnamon candies. This is another recipe adapted from Bob’s Red Mill with the addition of some Szechuan pepper.
8 cups (around 200 g) freshly popped or movie theater-style popcorn
A 9-ounce (255 g) box of “hot” cinnamon candy (like Hot Tamales or Atomic Fireballs)
2 cups (237 g) light corn syrup
2 teaspoons Szechuan peppercorns, crushed
Preheat oven to 250°F. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
Measure the popcorn into a large bowl, and set aside.
In a medium saucepan, cook the cinnamon candies, corn syrup, and Szechuan pepper to 235°F; stirring often. When it has come to temperature, pour the mixture over the popcorn, and stir to combine with a lightly oiled silicone spatula. The candy will set up quickly, so this requires haste.
Spread the cinnamon corn on your baking sheet, and bake for an hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Remove from the oven to cool, then break into small pieces.
The flavor of this popcorn is much as you’d expect. It tastes like cinnamon candies. The surprise is in its texture. Baking it has made the popcorn crispy, which contrasts with the toffee-like chewiness of the candy coating. Milk and cookies are a classic to leave for Santa; this, paired with a caramel corn cocktail, could be an alternative.
Miso Caramel Popcorn
Miso is a fermented soybean paste. Its salty, funky nature provides a good counterpoint to the sweetness of caramel. The original recipe is adapted from a recipe on the Food and Wine website.
9 cups (90 to 95 g) freshly popped or movie-style popcorn
6 Tablespoons (1½ sticks) butter
½ cup (99 g) packed brown sugar
¼ cup (4 Tablespoons or 60 g) white miso
2 Tablespoons light corn syrup
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
sea salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
3 Tablespoons sesame seeds
Measure popcorn into a large plastic or glass bowl, and set aside.
Toast the sesame seeds in a dry pan over medium-low heat, stirring or tossing continuously. They will deepen in color and release a nutty flavor. As soon as the seeds have darkened to a tawny color, like a lion, transfer them immediately to a plate to cool. If you keep them in the pan, they will continue to cook and might burn.
Miso Caramel Popcorn. Photo by John Fladd.
In a small saucepan, combine the butter, brown sugar, miso, corn syrup, sesame oil, and ½ teaspoon of salt. Cook over medium-low heat until the butter has melted and the mixture is bubbling. Whisk in the baking soda. This will make the caramel foam up; it’s supposed to.
Pour the miso caramel over the popcorn, and stir to combine with a lightly oiled silicone spatula. Add the sesame seeds you toasted earlier, and stir it again.
Place the bowl in your microwave, and cover it with a paper towel, to keep any splatter contained. Any drops of caramel that splash onto the sides or ceiling of your microwave will bond there like industrial concrete.
Cook the popcorn in your microwave for 1½ minutes.
Turn the popcorn out onto a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or a silicone mat, and sprinkle with more salt. Allow it to cool for 15 minutes before breaking it into pieces and serving.
French Onion Popcorn
This combines the best of two classic snacks, popcorn and chips and dip.
8 cups (80 to 90 g) freshly popped or movie-style popcorn
6 Tablespoons (¾ stick) butter, melted and cooled
1 ounce dry onion soup mix (about half a standard 2-ounce packet)
This is about as simple as it gets. It hardly seems fair to call this a “recipe.”
Measure the popcorn into a large bowl.
Pour the melted butter over it, stirring to combine.
Sprinkle half the soup mix over the popcorn and stir to combine, then repeat with the remaining soup mix. Serve with beer, or better yet, Champagne.
Discover — or rediscover — your love of making music with help from the experts
“So you wanna be a rock ’n’ roll star?” Roger McGuinn asked back in the ’60s. The answer? “Just get an electric guitar, take some time and learn how to play.” If only it were that easy. Back then, The Beatles and Stones fueled the dreams of would-be music heroes. These days, it’s Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran.
For the kids, anyway. It’s different for the recent empty-nester who’s always wanted to play the opening riff to “Smoke on the Water” and just bought a vintage Stratocaster on eBay. Both young and old need a place to take their rock ’n’ roll fantasies and flesh them out.
Fortunately, there are many places to go for acquiring the skills, for all ages, whether it’s someone picking up an instrument for the first time or looking to brush up on long-neglected talents, or a talented enough player with a desire to take things higher.
Further, options are available for a wide range of lifestyles, from free online lessons to one-stop shops that sell instruments with a book of lesson coupons, to one-on-one sessions that prep the ambitious for an open mic night. Here are a few that exist in the area.
Beginnings
There are a few things that every instructor agrees are essential. The first is to keep the instrument where it can be seen and played. “It’s better to just have it out,” says Danielle Miraglia, who teaches guitar on Zoom. “When you’re bored, instead of picking up your phone you can grab your guitar and noodle around on it.”
This means it’s smart to buy a stand to go with a new guitar, and save the case for a birthday present. Ditto for keyboards; get something to set it on. For the budding drummer, start with an electronic kit and headphones, so it won’t rock the house.
No. 2, though practice is essential, too much may have a negative effect.
“Fifteen to 20 minutes three or four times a week is better than an hour one day a week,” believes Eric Bilodeau of Strings & Things. “Just getting your hands used to it will help build finger strength, the neural pathways to tell a finger to move a certain way, and get your hand memory going.”
The third item is a rule that applies to a good instructor, and it’s typically the first topic of conversation when sitting down for the initial lesson. Begin with an understanding of why a student wants to learn how to play. Is there a specific song they want to master, or a musical style that attracts them?
Try to figure this out before buying an instrument. For example, it’s a bit easier learning to play on an electric guitar, but someone drawn to a coffeehouse vibe is better off with an acoustic.
“The important thing is finding one that’s going to make you want to play,” Bilodeau said. “Play a bunch and see which one speaks to you.”
School days
When that decision is made, the next question is, what’s the best way to learn? For a youngster, structure is important, so a schedule of lessons is a good idea. Bedford Youth Performing Company (BYPC) offers instruction for a wide variety of instruments and even has classes for full bands.
That idea may seem counterintuitive — shouldn’t mastery of the instrument come before playing with others? But Dave Couture, who’s taught guitar and drums at BYPC for over 35 years, spotted an opportunity to turn making music into a family affair, and further solidify a student’s engagement.
When parents came to the studio, Couture would inquire about their music background. “I’d go, ‘do you play an instrument?’ They’d say they do, or they used to, and I’d tell them to hop on the bass or whatever,” he said by phone in mid-November. “Then they’re playing along with their kids. It got me interested in creating these adult bands. It’s a lot of fun, and it keeps them interested.”
Eric Biloudeau of Strings & Things. Photo by Michael Witthaus
Couture leads a couple of all-adult band classes as well. Yes, though “youth” is in their name, BYPC is all-ages. “I have up to retirees,” Couture said. The disparity between groups means a different set of challenges in motivating students, he continued.
A youngster’s mood can change daily, depending on how school went. “I’ll say, ‘did you practice?’ and if they didn’t, we’ll work on what we did last week,” he said. “Sometimes the adults are worse. They’ll say, ‘I really wanted to do this, but I’m not practicing.’ I’ll tell them, ‘don’t worry, you’re learning every week … let’s learn a fun song.’”
On the other hand, working with retired people is often much more satisfying, Couture continued. “I’ve had a few of them that have said they wanted to do this forever. They’ve been thinking about it, and they’re usually pretty focused.”
Couture will remind those stressed about time or stuck in a rut that music is an art form. It’s something one of his Berklee professors told him once, and it calmed him down. “When I thought of it as an art form, I just relaxed and let it flow.”
Time management
Bob Desmarais, who runs NHTunes in Manchester’s Waumbec Mill, offers his own retiree story as proof that no one’s too old to play. “Janet is 94 — she started when she was 89,” he said during a tour of his studio and music academy. “We just had a show at RiverWoods; me, her, and two other residents. She was exhausted, it was an hour show, but she’s 94 freaking years old!”
Desmarais opened NHTunes in 2010, the same week he paid off his son’s college tuition. He continued to work as an IT manager at the outset while he recruited students. He quit his day job a year later, with three teachers on staff and almost 40 students. That’s grown over the years to 14 instructors who teach close to 140 students. In 2013 it moved down the hall into a space twice the size of the original.
A Berklee grad who plays Jimmy Buffett songs and bar tunes in a duo called the Sonic Boomers, he always had a passion for music, but Desmarais continues to parlay his computer skills in his business. A Google search of “music lessons in Manchester” will result in NHTunes near the top, proof of his SEO skills.
He has a slick web-based scheduling system. “It links all the instructors, what they teach, their availability,” Desmarais said. “Just book online, and it’ll put it in a Google Calendar. We have gift certificates for people to buy, and they can schedule lessons when they want.”
It’s perfect for busy professionals. “We have a group of people that just book per diem, they don’t sign up for monthly tuition,” he said. “They don’t want to commit to weekly lessons. I was nervous of that at first, worried that people were going to take one or two and stop. But we have this core group that books every week, every other week. It fills in the gaps in our schedule.”
NHTunes offers lessons on a range of instruments, along with studio production classes using Ableton Live and other software packages. That’s an extension of the studio recording services they provide, which is one of the key reasons Desmarais opened the business.
There are also frequent student recitals.
“I think the performance aspect of musicianship is really important,” Desmarais said. “We get kids out in front of people at nursing homes, senior centers, and stuff like that. The last thing you want to hear is, ‘They never play in front of me.’ Because music should be shared.”
Finally, with the youngsters, Desmarais strives to keep mom and dad looped in. “So they know what’s going on,” he said. “It’s really important, because unfortunately some parents have to ride kids sometimes to play and practice in between lessons, so you gotta know what they’re working on.”
Try before you buy
Andrew Grosvenor leads jam fusion band Andrew North & the Rangers and hosts the monthly open mic at BNH Stage in Concord. He also teaches piano at Concord Community Music School and Strings & Things, a store that’s now in Penacook Village after a couple of decades in downtown Concord.
He offers a unique way to check out his instructional skills — for a certain type of student. Grosvenor teaches all levels, but many of his charges have some experience and are looking to grow. For those, he has videos on his YouTube page, songs like Vince Guaraldi’s “Skating” or “Esther” by Phish that aren’t novice fare.
The videos do provide a sense of how he teaches, though.
“I’m the best fit for more intermediate or advanced folks,” Grosvenor said by phone recently, “who know the basics of the instrument but are looking to take the next steps in understanding theory and improvisation. That’s where my strengths are.”
Strings & Things is a one-stop shop, a place to go to purchase a guitar, keyboard or drum kit, schedule some lessons, and pay for everything at once. It’s also one of the more venerable places in the area. Mike Bilodeau opened it in 1982, and these days his son Eric oversees instruction there.
The shop offers classes on several instruments, Eric explained during an interview in Strings & Things’ piano room. “We do guitar, bass, drums, piano, mandolin, banjo and a lot of the brass instruments, like saxophone, flute, clarinet and trumpet,” he said. “I always say, if you like to annoy your neighbors, we can help you out.”
Students can be anywhere from 5 to 16, and beyond, and lessons begin with defining goals. “Do they want to be Jimi Hendrix or Ed Sheeran? There’s a big difference,” Eric said. “Do you want to get up at an open mic [or] go to a blues jam and be able to sit down and play a solo over a song? Maybe you just want to stay at home and make music in your bedroom … there’s all different ways you can take music now.”
The 14-member staff is mostly working musicians, like guitarist Mike Gallant, who performs around the area as Mikey G., drummer Paul Donahue and fiddler Jordan Tirrell-Wysocki. Fittingly, that was the path taken by Mike Bilodeau when he opened the store 42 years ago.
“I did a hitch in the Air Force, and the skills I had from the Air Force didn’t blend into society,” Mike said in the store’s guitar-filled back room. “I figured I’d go with my hobby; I love to play music. At that time, there was a lot around, and I was working five nights a week. My wife decided that I should be busy during the day too. So with her cheering me on, we opened up a very small store with very limited inventory.”
School of Rock. Courtesy photo.
Two years ago, they relocated for a sixth and final time, buying and renovating an old bank. “We had leased buildings for 40 years, and branch banks, as you would probably expect, are kind of going away,” he said. “So this place was a very good deal for us to purchase, and we’ll be here until the end of time.”
Though the store currently doesn’t hold student recitals, Mike thinks that will change in the future.
“We have a wonderful situation,” he said. “Riverside Park is right behind us on the Contoocook River, and our goal is to get some live music going there next spring. There’s also another brand new park being built across the street … we’re excited; this is going to be a real happening area for us.”
The covid effect
Before 2020, lessons were always taught in person, one on one. Then a pandemic changed the rules. Though there’s mostly been a return to the old days, there are a few instructors like Danielle Miraglia who decided to continue teaching after Covid.
“I never went back to in person,” she said by phone recently. “It was nice not to get a cold every five minutes for one thing, and to be honest, there’s a little bit of a different kind of drain when you do it via Zoom. If I miss the in-person experience, I’ll think, ‘what are you, crazy? You can do this with a cat sitting next to you.’”
A multiple New England Music Awards winner and Boston Music Award nominee, Miraglia started teaching as a way to deal with rising rent costs in Somerville, where she and husband live. Initially, she taught at the Real School of Music in Burlington, Mass. In hindsight, she’s glad she did — even if economics forced her decision.
“I think everybody should teach for some amount of time,” she said. “It forces you to learn things you might not have bothered with for your own stuff, and it reminds you of things you knew before that you might have forgotten. It’s made me a sharper musician in general.”
When working with a student, particularly a younger one, Miraglia encourages them to have patience with themselves. “Some kids will get really frustrated right away. They’ll be like, ‘I can’t do it,’ and I’ll say, it would be insane if you could do it right now. Of course you can’t, that’s why I’m here. I’m here to help you with that.”
Some are slow to pick it up, while others roar out of the gate. Miraglia recalled a 7-year old prodigy. “He immediately could do the Bo Diddley groove with his right hand, it was very easy to teach him,” she said. “He just kept getting better and better … now he’s in jazz band in school.”
Begin at the end
In Nashua, there’s a new spot that could be a major force on the local music scene. Though it won’t officially open until Dec. 14 — hopefully — the School of Rock has a unique approach to learning that begins with focusing on what an aspiring student wants right away.
“We start with the goal of performance and work backward from there,” school owner Andy McKenna said by phone recently. “They do get a full music education, but we start by saying, ‘Hey, you’re going to be playing in three months.’”
To that end, “we focus on helping people learn the stuff that they really like to listen to and want to play and go from there,” he continued. “That’s a big difference from music education that starts with learning all the technique and theory first and eventually getting to songs. Let’s figure out what you’d love to be able to play.”
For example, a budding bass player should leave the first day knowing the opening riff to Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” so they can go home and play it for the parents. “They go, ‘Wow, I know that song, that’s great,’ and feel like they’re getting their money’s worth too.”
School of Rock is a national chain inspired by the Jack Black movie, with hundreds of locations. Nashua is the first in New Hampshire. Their core age range is 8 through 18. “That said, we have programs starting at age 3,” McKenna said. “I like to say it’s from age 3 to 103.”
It begins with the early childhood Little Wing and ranges to the Rock 101 performance program. “We’ve got adult programs as well. In fact, a full 25 to 30 percent of people interested in signing up are adults. And I get basically two stories. One, they used to play a little bit, but had to give it up because they got busy. The other story is, ‘Hey, I always wanted to play, and never did. Am I too old?’ Our answer is, ‘absolutely not.’”
The full Rock 101 program lasts for three months and includes a 45-minute weekly lesson and 90 minutes of group rehearsal. “That runs about roughly $400 a month,” McKenna said. “If you break down the number of hours that are being spent with instruction, it comes out to $40 an hour.”
For the ambitious, Rock 101 can be followed by a performance program that includes longer rehearsals and more challenging material. “There are 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds playing Steely Dan, Rush and Pink Floyd,” he said. “It’s fairly complex musical stuff, so they get quite good as they move through the program.”
McKenna’s interest in opening School of Rock came from his empathy for kids struggling to fit in, who don’t for example play a sport, but find concert band too staid. They just want to rock, and he can relate.
“The friendships and connections I’ve made have been mostly focused and centered around my enjoyment of playing music with others,” he said. “I think School of Rock has a formula that helps people do that. It’s a place where a lot of kids have really been able to find their people, their place, and really thrive. When I heard those real stories about the many schools that are in operation, I just felt, yeah, that’s what I want to do.”
Take it to the next level
There are performers who’ve moved past rudimentary musical foundations and want to go further. A guy like Chad LaMarsh can help. A veteran singer, guitarist and songwriter with a long resume, LaMarsh offers Get Gig Ready, an effort geared toward taking all those acquired skills and doing something with them.
“The program is all-encompassing of absolutely everything that goes into playing a gig,” LaMarsh said in a recent phone interview. “We do a lot of what I call vocal maintenance to make sure that everybody can get through singing three to four hours a night for five nights straight. That’s a lot of abuse on your throat.”
It covers gear and more — what to buy, where to put it, and ways to measure results.
“How you use your mixing board, that’s a huge one,” he said. “There’s a technique I’ve designed for practicing so that the musician knows exactly what it’s like to have your speaker a few feet away from you…. We often fall short because we don’t know what we sound in front of the stage.”
The short-term goal of Get Gig Ready is an appearance at an open mic, like the Tuesday night gathering at KC’s Rib Shack in Manchester. It’s the beginning of a long road that optimistically ends at SNHU Arena, or at least a ticketed club gig. Clearly, this is geared toward performers with serious intentions.
“If it’s somebody just looking to kick the tires and just poof around, I don’t have any time for that,” LaMarsh said. “These are people that are actually already super talented … they’re already at a level that I know I can do something to help them excel even more. Those are the people I work with.”
Sage Advice
Guitarist Brad Myrick also works with and mentors other musicians. Every summer for the past several years he’s conducted master classes in Italy, along with touring. His advice, however, is applicable for those at any level looking to make music.
“Whatever it is that’s exciting to you about your instrument, that made you want to play it, always access that thing … that’s absolutely the first advice,” Myrick said from his home in Hopkinton. “I’m still doing that, after playing the guitar for 30 years.”
It’s a great time to be a musician, he continued, adding that finding an instructor to connect with is critical. “Having a little bit of structure and accountability, the consistency, of ‘hey, I’m going to show up once a week and I’m going to do this thing’ … that sometimes will keep us from slipping back into our old habits.”
Myrick recalled that when he first picked up guitar at age 14, ultimately taking his first lesson at Strings & Things, there were some affordable resources available to help him jump start his interest. There are even more today, and many of them don’t cost a thing.
“When I started, I knew a little bit about music, but I didn’t know anything about guitar,” he said. “I got a basic guitar book and started reading … it was like, ‘this is the E string, place your finger here.’ I got pretty far in the first couple weeks before I had any formal interaction with somebody. And if you’re self-motivated, there are endless online resources. Not all of them are great, but a lot of them are really good.”
Whatever path is chosen, Myrick believes a little bit of self-guidance can add a lot to the learning experience. “When I’m teaching, I try to incorporate both models,” he said. “A little bit of self-curiosity, a little bit of other free resources, and having someone also to check in with — mentorship. It’s a great combination.”
Learn how to play
Here are some area music teachers.
• Bedford Youth Performing Company (BYPC) 155 State Rte. 101, Bedford bypc.org. One-on-one lessons for ages 9 and up – 30 minutes, $148.32/month, 60 minutes, $222.48/month and 60 minutes, $296.64/month. Costs vary, call for a quote.
• Danielle Miraglia daniellem.com. Online only, $37/half hour Zoom or FaceTime, volume discount available ($105/three half-hour lessons).
• Get Gig Ready With Chad LaMarsh getgigready.com $60/half-hour lesson, 13- and 26-week coaching classes available, contact for quote.
• Let’s Play Music & Make Art 2626 Brown Ave., Unit 2, Manchester, plus locations in Derry and Hudson, letsplaymusic.com. Trial private lesson $36.25, trial group class, $27.50, tuition ranges from $149/month for weekly 30-minute lessons.
• Manchester Music Mill 329 Elm St., Manchester, mmmlessons.com. Teachers set their own rates, which range from $20 to $25 per week for a half-hour private lesson.
• Merrimack Music Academy 1 Bryce Drive, Merrimack, merrimackmusicacademy.com. $155/month tuition covers up to five private lessons, instruction materials and access to academy resources.
• North Main Music 23 Charron Ave., Suite 1, Nashua, northmainmusic.com. 30-minute introductory lesson is $25, flexible drop-in program is $140 for four lessons.
• School of Rock 225 DW Highway, Suite C2, Nashua, schoolofrock.com. Rock 101 program is around $400/month, averages out to $40/hour.
• Strings & Things 339 Village St., Concord, stringsandthingsmusic.com. $30/half-hour lesson, usually paid by the month with four or five lessons per month.
• Ted Hebert Music School 880 Page St., Manchester, tedhebert.com. $30/half-hour lesson.
Time for the Hippo’s Holiday Guide! Let your season of holiday fun start with our annual listing of events from Thanksgiving Eve through New Year’s Day. Find your tree lightings, craft fairs, rockin’ holiday shows, classical music holiday shows, screenings of Scrooged and so much more.
Know of a bit of holiday cheer we missed? Let us know at [email protected]. Now pull up your calendar and start loading your schedule with holiday fun!
From big shows to corner bars, there are plenty of ways to lengthen the upcoming four-day weekend with a pre-game party. The sober and sober-curious call it Friendsgiving, while more than a few lean into Drinksgiving. Whatever the name, it’s a night that provides a great excuse to meet and catch up with family and friends ahead of the big feast.
Here’s a range of choices, including an evening of blues shredding, lots of trivia events, solo musicians and even a few opportunities for karaoke. When one thinks about it, belting out “My Heart Will Go On” for a gaggle of pals may be a perfect activity for the moment.
603 Bar & Lounge (368 Central Ave., Dover, 742-9283) The regular Hip-Hop Wednesday event hosted by J-Rawk happens with a Friendsgiving twist.
Alamo Texas Barbecue (99 Route 13, Brookline, 721-5000) DJ Trivia happens at 7 p.m., come out and test your ephemeral knowledge.
American Legion Post 70 (169 Walton Road, Seabrook, 474-2430) Karaoke is back, it’s a night of singing and entertainment, hosted by DJ B-rad.
American Legion Post 72 (164 Wolfeboro Highway, Alton, 875-3461) Ghost Riderz play classic rock and country tunes.
Auspicious Brew (2 Washington St., Dover, 953-7240) Open mic with Rich Amorim at this local music-friendly kombucha brewery, the first in New Hampshire.
Backyard Brewery (1211 S. Mammoth Road, Manchester, 623-3545) Trivia with Bill Seney.
Barley House (132 N. Main St., Concord, 228-6363) Holy Cow Music Bingo puts a College of Musical Knowledge degree to the test.
Big House (322 Lakeside Ave., Laconia, bighousenightclub.com) Annual Turkeyoke Karaoke Bash.
Bonfire (950 Elm St., Manchester, 217-5600) DJ Mike Benoit spins the hits.
Brick House Restaurant & Brewery (241 Union Square, Milford, 378-0092) New Hampshire-based rock, punk and jam band Vales End performs.
Buckey’s (240 Governor Wentworth Highway, Moultonborough, 476-5485) FuzzBoxx plays rock covers.
Chapel + Main (83 Main St., Dover, 842-5170) Dan Blakeslee and Calabash Club kick off the holiday season, and Krampus, C+P’s Belgian holiday ale, is also in the spotlight.
Chop Shop (920 Lafayette Road, Seabrook, 760-7706) Karaoke and Cocktails with DJ Dale.
Copper Door (15 Leavy Drive, Bedford, 488-2677) Justin Jordan plays covers at 6 p.m.
Copper Door (41 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-2033) Clint Lapointe plays favorite hits at 6 p.m.
CR’s The Restaurant (287 Exeter Road, Hampton, 929-7972) Bob Tirelli sings and plays classic rock songs.
Defiant Records & Craft Beer (609 Main St., Laconia, 527-8310) It’s an Ugly Sweater Christmas Party on the night before T-Day with singer/songwriter Mike Loughlin performing.
Derryfield (625 Mammoth Road, Manchester, 623-2880) The D-Comp Duo is back for what’s become a tradition on Thanksgiving Eve.
Revo Casino & Social House (887 Central Ave., Dover, 742-9632) The former Dover Bowl is rebranded and reopened as the Samantha Rae Duet entertains.
Fody’s (9 Clinton St., Nashua, 577-9015) World Tavern Trivia — impress your friends and family
Forum Pub (15 Village St., Concord, 552-0137) Gardner Berry of Mama Kicks fame and more plays solo.
Fratello’s Italian Grille (155 Dow St., Manchester, 624-2022) Joanie Cicatelli plays solo. She cites classic rock influences from classic rock influences including Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders and The Who.
Governors Inn (78 Wakefield St., Rochester, 332-0107) Freddie Catalfo, remembered for his time in the band Rose Cold Reaction, plays solo.
Grill 28 (Pease Golf Course, 200 Grafton Road, Portsmouth, 766-6646) Jordan Quinn sings and plays. Her version of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” is always a set standout.
Hermit Woods Winery (72 Main St., Merideth, 253-7968) Songwriter Roundup puts original music in the spotlight, with Sam Luke Chase and Jay Psaros. The event is hosted by Katie Dobbins.
Hill Top Pizzeria (1724 Dover Road, Epsom, 736-0027) Trivia at 6:30 p.m.
Homestead (641 DW Highway, Merrimack, 429-2022) Casey Roop plays an eclectic mix of solo acoustic covers.
Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club (135 Congress St., Portsmouth, ticketmaster.com) Guitar prodigy Quinn Sullivan plays with his band; tickets $17.50 – $57.50.
KC’s Rib Shack (837 Second St., Manchester, 627-RIBS) Trivia night at the barbecue hot spot.
Keys Piano Bar (1087 Elm St., Manchester, 836-7796) Jonny Friday & Friends ring in the long weekend.
Lafayette Club (34 High St., Nashua, 889-9860) Rabbit’s Foot mixes originals with covers from Phish, Talking Heads, The Dead and Edgar Winter, to name a few.
Lilac City Grille (103 N. Main St., Rochester, 332-3984) Go-to guitarist Tim Theriault plays solo at 7 p.m.
Liquid Therapy (14 Court St., Nashua, 402-9391) Thanksgiving Eve celebration with beer specials.
Lithermans Limited Brewing (126B Hall St., Concord, 219-0784) TAPSgiving provides the perfect opportunity to catch up with friends and family before the holiday chaos begins.
Lynn’s 102 Tavern (76 Derry St., Hudson, 943-7832) Night Owls play covers, including a bunch of new songs added to their show.
Michael’s Flatbread (8 Stiles Road, Salem, 893-2765) The Regular Gents host a Thanksgiving Eve Bash.
Murphy’s Taproom (494 Elm St., Manchester, 644-3535) Jonny Friday Duo moves across town to play at 9:30 p.m.
North Side Grille (323 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-3663) Food and drink specials all night long.
Old School Bar and Grill (49 Range Road, Windham, 458-6051) Craft cocktails and dinner specials.
Over the Moon Farmstead (1253 Upper City Road, Pittsfield, 210-2409) Doug Mitchell performs.
Par28 (23 S. Broadway, Salem, 458-7078) Live DJ, Downeast Cider tasting, food and drink specials.
Patrick’s (18 Weirs Road, Gilford, 293-0841) Game Time Trivia happens.
Penuche’s Alehouse (16 Bicentennial Square in Concord; 228-9833) will feature the band UP at 9 p.m.
Pembroke City Limits (134 Main St., Pembroke, 210-2409) Dusty Gray returns to play country rock at this music-centric spot.
Portsmouth Gas Light (64 Market St., Portsmouth, 430-9122) DJ Koko and DJ Bounce trade off beats at the Ultimate Reunion Party, $35 at portsmouthnhtickets.com.
Red’s Kitchen + Tavern (530 Lafayette Road, Seabrook, 760-0030) Fred Ellsworth plays solo.
Reed’s North (2 E. Main St., Warner, 456-2143) Joe Leary plays rock reimagined from 3 to 6 p.m. and Ben Dobrowski of the Dobros performs at 6:30 p.m.
Riley’s Place (29 Mont Vernon St., Milford, 380-3480) Open mic with Eric Lamarche.
Rochester Opera House (32 N. Main St., Rochester, 335-1992) Bearly Dead, a tribute act that’s attracted both Mike Campbell of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Jerry Garcia’s Wolf Guitar, which appeared in 2018.
Saddle Up Saloon (92 Route 125, Kingston, 347-1313) Thanksgiving Rockin’ Eve featuring the return of Rustfeather.
Shaskeen (909 Elm St., Manchester, 625-0246) Annual party returns with DJ Myth and host Shawn Caliber at 9 p.m.
Stone Church (5 Granite St., Newmarket, 659-7700) Karaoke.
Strange Brew (88 Market St., Manchester, 666-4292) Open mic, which is usually hosted by Jordan Quinn and Scott Armstrong.
Stumble Inn (20 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, 422-3210) The Slakas return to play covers and preside over a fun time.
Telly’s (235 Calef Highway, Epping, 679-8225) Roc & Ron play covers.
The Goat (142 Congress St., Portsmouth, 590-4628) Rob Pagnano plays solo.
The Goat (50 Old Granite St., Manchester, 603-4628) Cover band Turn It Up! goes for a country vibe.
The Local (2 E. Main St., Warner, 456-6066) Brad Myrick makes a rare appearance with PJ Donohue.
The Nest (181 Plaistow Road, Plaistow, 974-1686) Bite the Bullet performs classic rock covers.
Thirsty Moose (21 Congress St., Portsmouth, 427-8645) Holly Heist, New England-based cover and original act featuring Alex Roy of Sparks the Rescue.
To Share Brewing (720 Union St., Manchester, 836-6947) Multi-decade themed party with DJ Maltese spinning sets from the ’80s, ’90s and ’00s from 5 to 8 p.m. Dress up like your fave decade (or don’t).
Toll Booth Tavern (740 Second NH Turnpike North, Francestown, 588-1800) Sheepdip plays rock classics.
Tomahawk Butchery & Tavern (454 DW Highway, Merrimack, 365-4960) Chad LaMarsh plays solo acoustic tunes.
Uno Pizzeria & Grill (15 Fort Eddy Road, Concord, 226-8667) Tyler Levs performs solo.
Wally’s Pub (144 Ashworth Ave., Hampton, 926-6954) Scott Brown & The Diplomats rock the house.
Whym Craft Pub & Brewery (853 Lafayette Road, Hampton, 601-2801) Cribbage for a Cause night at the brew pub.
Looking to get in a quick 5K before your holiday feast? Here are some of the road races happening this season.
Thanksgiving Day races
All of these races are on Thursday, Nov. 28
• The Fisher Cats 5K sponsored by Dartmouth Health and the Fisher Cats will take place at 9 a.m. at Delta Dental Stadium (1 Line Drive, Manchester). Prior to the race there will be a Lil’ Turkey Trot at 8:30 a.m. Race-day registration and bib pickup will be available from 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. at the stadium. Registration costs: adult (ages 12+) $30 in advance, kids (11 and younger) $15, Stonyfield Lil’ Turkey Trot (8 and younger) $10, virtual 5K $30. All proceeds will benefit the New Hampshire Food Bank. See millenniumrunning.com.
• The Rotary Club of Merrimack’s 5K Turkey Trot starts at 8 a.m.. See merrimack5k.com.
• The 16th annual BAC and Bow Police Department Turkey Trot will be held at 8 a.m. at 55 Falcon Way, Bow. Registration: adult $35, youth $25, kids $15. Same-day registration increases price by $5. See runsignup.com.
• The Dover Turkey Trot starts at 8:30 a.m. and is described as a 5K race for runners and walkers of all ages and abilities, according to doverturkeytrot.com. The start and finish is at Garrison Elementary School in Dover (to raise money for the Garrison School PTA) and registration costs $25 in advance, $30 on the day for adults; $12 in advance, $15 on the day for fourth grade and under.
• The Hampstead Turkey Trot, a 5K, starts at 8:30 a.m. at St. Anne’s Church (26 Emerson Ave. in Hampstead). Registration costs $23 for adults (18-61), $18 for seniors (62+) and for children (5-17). Registration on race day (from 7 to 8:10 a.m.) costs $28 for adults, $23 for seniors and children. See sites.google.com/site/recreationhampstead.
• The Free Fall 5K starts at 8:30 a.m. and begins and ends at the Rochester Community Center (150 Wakefield St. in Rochester). Registration costs $25 for adults, $20 for ages 13 to 17, $15 for ages 7 to 12, and is free for 6 and under (plus $5 to register on race day). See freefall5k.com.
• The 17th annual Gilford Youth Center Turkey Trot 5K Race and Family Walk will start at 9 a.m. (8:45 a.m. for walkers) oat the Youth Center (19 Potter Hill Road in Gilford). Registration costs $26 per person or $90 for a family of up to five people. See gilfordyouthcenter.com.
• The 18th annual Lake Sunapee Turkey Trot, a 5K where costumes are encouraged and proceeds go to the recreation department, starts at 9 a.m. at the Sunapee Harbor gazebo with a 1K Chicken Run for kids starting at 8:15 a.m. and going down Lake Avenue. Registration costs $30 for ages 13 to 64, $15 for ages 65 and up and $5 for ages 12 and under (kids 12 and under running in the Chicken Run are free). See sunapeeturkeytrot.com. The event will feature a pie sale; pies are $10 each.
• The 30th Annual Windham Turkey Trot, which offers 1-, 3- and 5-mile options, starts at 9 a.m. at 74 Blossom Road in Windham. Registration costs $30. See shepherdspantry.net/turkey-trot.
• The Brookline Turkey Fun Run/Walk begins at 8 a.m. at 1 Mason Road in Brookline. The race is a 5K out-and-back course on a mixture of asphalt and hard packed crushed gravel. Registration is $20 and ends Nov. 27. Visit runsignup.com/Race/NH.
• The GDTC Thanksgiving 5K Turkey Trot will take place at 39 Pond Road in Derry at 9 a.m. Online pre-registration is $25 for adults (13 and older) and $10 for kids (12 and under). A Virtual GDTC Turkey Trot is $10. Registration ends Tuesday, Nov. 26. Same-day registration will be $5 more, if there are spaces left. For all entries the organizers request a donation of any non-perishable canned good or dry food item.
• The 22nd Annual Great Gobbler 5K will take place at Nashua High School South (36 Riverside St., Nashua). The 5K race starts at 8 a.m. sharp. The Little Gobbler Fun Run (400m) starts at 7:30 a.m. at the South Track. Registration is $30 for adults (18 and older), $25 for youths (17 and younger). The Little Gobbler (400m) Fun Run is free (ages 2-10). Registration on race day will cost $35 for adults and $30 for youth.
Thanksgiving Weekend races
• The Amherst Junior Women’s Club will hold its 25th Trot Off Your Turkey 5K & 1 Mile Fun Run on Friday, Nov. 29. The fun run starts at 9 a.m. and the 5K starts at 9:30 a.m.; both runs start and end at the Congregational Church in Amherst. Registration costs $30 for the 5K, $10 for the fun run. See ajwcnh.org.
• Bishop Brady High School (25 Columbus Ave. in Concord; bishopbrady.edu) will hold its Galloping Gobbler 4-mile race on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 9:30 a.m. Registration costs $30 for ages 16 and up and $20 for ages 15 and under. Bib pickup is 8 a.m. on race day. Find the link to the registration site via Bishop Brady’s Facebook page.
Rest of the season
Lil Elf Run at the Santa Claus Shuffle. Photo courtesy of Millenium Running.
• BASC Santa Claus Shuffle is on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 3 p.m. on Elm Street in Manchester before the Manchester City Christmas Parade. The 3-mile out-and-back course starts and finishes at Veterans Park in downtown Manchester and includes four “aid stations” featuring the four favorite Santa food groups: chocolate, cookies and milk, candy and maple, according to the website. The first 1,400 participants to sign up get a Santa suit to run in. Stonyfield Organic Lil’ Elf Runs (of 100 yards) start at 2:30 p.m. Registration costs $30 for adults in person or virtually (12+) in advance, $35 on race day; $25 for youth (12 to 20), $30 on race day, and $10 for kids (11 and younger) in advance or on race day, and $10 for the Stonyfield Lil’ Elf Run (8 and younger). See millenniumrunning.com to register.
• The 2024 Jingle Bell Run, a 5K where festive costume dress is encouraged, will be held Saturday, Dec. 14, at 8:30 a.m. at Northeast Delta Dental Stadium in Manchester. Registration costs $45 after Nov. 1, $50 on the day for timed runners; $40 after Nov. 1 and $45 on the day for untimed runners (both include shirt and jingle bells), and $30 for virtual runners, according to events.arthritis.org.
• The Ugly Sweater 4-Miler will take place Saturday, Dec. 14, at Backyard Brewery and Kitchen (1211 S. Mammoth Road, Manchester, 623-3545, backyardbrewerynh.com) at 9 a.m. . All race proceeds will go to benefit three local animal rescue groups: the Humane Society of Greater Nashua, New Hampshire SPCA, and the Monadnock Humane Society. This 21+ event will include a post-race party. Registration is $40 ($50 on race day). Visit runscore.runsignup.com.
• Yule Light Up the Night on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 4:30 p.m. at the New Hampshire Speedway in Loudon. Run the 2.1-mile course through the “Gift of Lights” display. Registration costs $25 for adults (12+) in advance, $30 on the day; $15 for youth (4 to 11) in advance, $20 on the day, $10 for kids (3 and younger), . See millenniumrunning.com to register.
• The Running on Empty 4-Mile Race will take place Saturday, Dec. 21, at 11 a.m. at Bishop Brady High School (25 Columbus Ave., Concord). There will be prizes for the top three male and female finishers, and rubber duckies for winners in each age category. Registration is $30 at runreg.com/life-in-the-slow-lane.
• The Apple Therapy and Derry Sports & Rehab Millenium Mile is a one-mile downhill race on Wednesday, Jan. 1, at 2 p.m. Registration costs $20 for adults (12+) in advance, $25 on race day; $15 for youth (11 and under), $20 on race day, and $20 for virtual runners. See millenniumrunning.com.
Stroll into the season
Nashua’s annual Holiday Stroll lights up the night
The magical time of the year of the 29th Annual Nashua Winter Holiday Stroll has arrived. Paul Shea is the Executive Director of Great American Downtown in Nashua and spoke to the Hippo about the holiday staple.
“The winter holiday stroll takes place each year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving in Nashua,” Shea said.
Attendees will be greeted by a community of cheer that involves “downtown businesses, area nonprofits, vendors, musicians, other performers and of course, the well-known gentleman from the North Pole and his wife, Santa and Mrs. Claus,” Shea said.
Kids will be excited by a fun addition inspired by hot chocolate.
“We will be having a kids’ ride in the early afternoon from 1 to 4 p.m.which is a teacup ride that is dubbed Santa’s Cocoa Cruisers. That will be located at the intersection of High and Main Street,” Shea said.
Jonee Earthquake. Courtesy photo.
Little ones can meet Santa and Mrs. Claus too from 1 to 4 p.m. at the Nashua Center for the Arts. “So [for] folks with younger kids that may have an early bedtime, this is a really great opportunity to get out and to get kind of into the holiday spirit without being out in the chilly evening,” Shea said.
They will be at the Hunt Memorial Building from 6 to 9 p.m. “That is a return to tradition. For a number of years, Santa was located at another location, and we’re very excited to be back at the Hunt Memorial Building,” Shea said.
Sculpture has a place in the stroll. “We will have live ice sculpture carving at City Hall,” Shea said.
Everything begins with the procession. “Gathering in front of City Hall begins at 4 p.m.,” Shea said, “and the stroll will step off after we all light our strolling candles … at 5 o’clock. We will head up Main Street to the City Hall to the Hunt Memorial building where the City Christmas tree is located for the big lighting.” Santa Claus and the mayor of Nashua will do the countdown.
After the lighting, all of downtown Nashua will be in the festive spirit.
“This year we also have an Artist and Artisans Holiday Bazaar, which will be located on West Pearl Street, near to the Nashville Performing Arts Center. It will be an outdoor holiday shopping market with approximately 20 to 25 vendors with all sorts of great offerings, locally crafted goods, jewelry, fun and funny items, and some beautiful artwork,” he said.
There will be three sets of music and more than 10 stages throughout the Holiday Winter Stroll. “There will be no shortage of things to do and see. Of course, a lot of great food from our food truck vendors and fair style food vendors and a lot of great downtown restaurants will be serving some of their, some of the favorites that they bring out to the stroll each year along Main Street as well.”
A shuttle service will begin at 3 p.m. that will leave from Holman Stadium as well as Rivier University.
“We do recommend that people take advantage of that and they’re welcome to stay throughout the afternoon and evening,” Shea said. “The last returning bus will depart from the downtown drop-off location to the parking lots at Holman and Revere at 9.30 p.m. That is the kind of calling time for the public. The stroll stops off at 5, and then the event itself ends at 9 p.m.”
“It’s a great opportunity for the community to come together … It’s a great way for people to catch up and see familiar faces when they’re home for the holidays. And it is, it’s really just a rich, joy-filled evening of festive fun,” Shea said.
Nashua Holiday Stroll. Courtesy photo.
29th Annual Nashua Winter Holiday Stroll When: Saturday, Nov. 30 4 p.m. Gathering at City Hall to receive candles 5 p.m. Stroll procession begins 5: 45 to 9 p.m. Stroll and explore downtown More: downtownnashua.org/holidaystroll/
There are lots of theatrical productions of the holiday classics The Nutcracker and A Christmas Carol this season.
A Christmas Carol
• The Palace Theatre (80 Hanover St., Manchester) presents A Christmas Carol from Nov. 29 through Dec. 29, with showtimes on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. and Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $35 to $59. Visit palacetheatre.org or call 668-5588.
• Gerald Dickens, the great-great-grandson of Charles Dickens, brings his one-man performance of A Christmas Carol to the Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua) on Friday, Nov. 29, at 7 p.m. Tickets range from $29 to $69. Visit nashuacenterforthearts.com or call 657-8774. Dickens will also perform at the Dana Center (Saint Anselm College, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester) on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m.
• The Souhegan Valley Chorus presents A Christmas Carol in Concert, a choral presentation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, on Sunday, Dec. 1 at 4 p.m. at First Congregational Church (10 Union St., Milford). Tickets are available in advance from members or at the door. Tickets are $18 for adults, $15 for students and seniors, free for age 12 and younger. Visit souheganvalleychorus.org.
• The Players’ Ring Theatre (105 Marcy St., Portsmouth) presents A Christmas Carol from Dec. 6 through Dec. 23. Shows are on Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 and 7 p.m. as well as select Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7 p.m. Tickets range from $18 to $32 and the show is not included in ticket packages. Visit playersring.org or call 436-8123.
• Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative presents A Christmas Carol at the Colonial Theatre (609 Main St., Laconia) on Friday, Dec 13, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 14, at 2 and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. The performance is from an original adaptation by New Hampshire native Joel Mercier and the show features Granite State actors of all ages, according to the website. Tickets range from $18 to $22. Visit coloniallaconia.com or call 657-8774.
• The Rochester Opera House (31 Wakefield St., Rochester) presents A Christmas Carol from Friday, Dec. 13, through Sunday, Dec. 22, with showtimes on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 5 p.m. and an additional performance on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 2 p.m. Tickets range from $22 to $ 30. Visit rochesteroperahouse.com or call 335-1992.
• The Players’ Ring Theatre (105 Marcy St., Portsmouth) presents What the Dickens, an improvised comedy version of A Christmas Carol, Sunday, Dec. 31, at 6 p.m. Tickets cost $15. Visit playersring.org or call 436-8123.
The Nutcracker
• The Methuen Ballet Ensemble performs The Nutcracker on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 1 and 4 p.m. at the Dana Center (Saint Anselm College, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester). The show features Sabi Varga and Emily Entingh. Tickets cost $38. Visit tickets.anselm.edu or call 641-7700.
• Safe Haven Ballet performs The Nutcracker at the Colonial Theater (609 Main St., Laconia) on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 14, at 4:30 p.m., at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord) Tickets cost $45 for adults and $40 for students and seniors at the Colonial Theater and between $44 and $54 at the Cap Center. Visit safehavenballet.org/events for more info.
• Northeastern Ballet Theatre performs The Nutcracker on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 1, at 2 p.m. at the Kingswood Regional Art Center (396 S. Main St., Wolfeboro). There will be additional performances at the Johnson Center (30 Academic Way, Durham) on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. Tickets cost between $25 and $30. Visit northeasternballet.org or call 834-8834.
• New England Dance Ensemble presents The Nutcracker on Saturday, Nov. 30, and Sunday, Dec. 1, at 4 p.m. at the Seifert Performing Arts Center (4 Geremonty Drive, Salem). Tickets cost $41.50 to $61.50. Visit nede.org for more info or call 1-800-595-4TIX.
• Sole City Dance presents The Nutcracker at the Rochester Opera House (31 Wakefield St., Rochester) Thursday, Dec. 5, through Sunday, Dec. 8. Showtimes are 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 5, Friday, Dec. 6, and Saturday, Dec. 7, and 2 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 7, and Sunday, Dec. 8. Tickets cost between $24 and $28. Visit solecitydance.org.
• The Seacoast Repertory Theatre (125 Bow St., Portsmouth) presents a unique modern rendition of The Nutcracker that will run from Thursday, Dec. 5, through Sunday, Dec. 22. Their rendition is a reimagining that infuses the timeless tale with jazz and contemporary flair. Ticket prices range from $37 to $68. Visit seacoastrep.org or call 433-4793.
• The Bedford Dance Center presents The Nutcracker on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 6 p.m. at the Dana Center at Saint Anselm College (100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester). Tickets cost $23. Visit tickets.anselm.edu to purchase tickets online or call or call 641-7700.
• Portsmouth School of Ballet presents The Nutcracker at the Dover High Auditorium on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 5 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 8, at 10 a.m and 3 p.m. Tickets cost $25, can only be purchased with cash or check and can be purchased at the box office or in advance at 95 Brewery Lane in Portsmouth. Visit psb-nh.com/performances or call 319-6958.
• St. Paul’s School Ballet Company will present The Nutcracker: Act II on Friday, Dec. 13, and Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 15, at 3 p.m. at Memorial Hall, St. Paul’s School (325 Pleasant St. in Concord). The show is free, first come first-served, and the show lasts about an hour.
• Turning Pointe Center of Dance presents The Nutcracker at the Concord City Auditorium (2 Prince St., Concord) on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 2 p.m. Tickets cost $25 at the door or $23 in advance. Visit turningpointecenterofdance.com or call 485-8710.
• New England School of Dance presents The Nutcracker on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 6 p.m. at the Stockbridge Theater at Pinkerton Academy (5 Pinkerton St., Derry). Tickets cost $30 and $35 on the day of the performance. Visit newenglandschoolofdance.com or call 935-7326.
• Dance Visions Network presents The Nutcracker Suite Acts I & II on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 12:30 and 5:30 p.m. at the Dana Center (Saint Anselm College, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester). Tickets cost $25. Visit tickets.anselm.edu to purchase tickets online or call 641-7700.
• Ballet Misha presents The Nutcracker on Saturday, Dec. 21, at 1 and 6 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 22, at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the Dana Center (Saint Anselm College, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester). Tickets cost between $30 and $35. Visit tickets.anselm.edu to purchase tickets online or call 641-7700.
• The New Hampshire School of Ballet presents The Nutcracker on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 2 p.m. at the Concord City Auditorium (14 Canterbury Road, Concord). Tickets can be purchased at the door and are $25. There will be an additional performance on Sunday, Dec. 30, at 7 p.m. at the Palace Theatre (80 Hanover St., Manchester). Tickets cost $30 and can be purchased at the box office or online at palacetheatre.org or call 668-5588.
Sure, The Nutcracker and The Christmas Carol are great, but there is even more to the holiday theater season. Get your fill of the Grinch and the Herdman family, Anna and Elsa, kids’ ballets, off-Broadway talents and much more at these seasonal theatrical productions.
• The Music Hall (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will feature Disney’s Frozen presented by Ogunquit Playhouse Wednesday, Nov. 27, through Sunday, Dec. 22, with shows Wednesdays through Thursdays (except for Thanksgiving). The Music Hall also presents Nat Zegree: The Nat Before Christmas on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m.; and Juston McKinney’s Comedy Year In Review 2024 on Thursday, Dec. 26, at 7 p.m., Friday, Dec. 27, at 8 p.m., and Saturday, Dec. 28, at 4:30 and 8 p.m.
• Pontine Theatre presents A New England Christmas at the Plains School (1 Plains Ave., Portsmouth) Friday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Dec. 15, with performances on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The show includes musical accompaniment by Ellen Carlson of the New Hampshire Fiddle Ensemble. Tickets are priced at $32 for general admission and $29 for seniors and students. Visit pontine.org.
Pontine Theatre.
• Majestic Productions also brings Sh-Boom! A Christmas Miracle, a musical full of ’60s doo-wop hits and holiday classics,to the Majestic Theatre (880 Page St., Manchester). Performances are on Friday, Dec. 6, at 7 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 7, at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 8, at 2 p.m. Tickets are priced at $22 for adults, $18 for seniors 65+ and $15 for children age 17 and under. Visit majestictheatre.net.
• Bedford off Broadway will present Christmas Belles, a Jones Hope Wooten comedy, from Friday, Dec. 6, through Sunday, Dec. 15, with Friday and Saturday performances at 8 p.m. and the Sunday Matinees happen at 2 p.m. at the Bedford Town Hall (Corner of 70 Bedford Center Rd. & 3 Meetinghouse Road, Bedford). This show is directed by Joe Pelonzi with Pat Napolitano as Stage Manager and the cast consists of Lisa Colburn, John Cunha, Deb Curtis, Colleen Deitrich, Claire Fry, Cody Goodwin, Stella Kloc, Alex Lemay, Karyn Russell Merriman, Joshua Sanborn, and Hilerie Flathers Wiecking. General admission is $15, $12 for students and seniors. Tickets can be purchased at the door, or in advance at Brown Paper Tickets, brownpapertickets.com/event/6486217.
• Break a Leg Legally presents Debbie Macomber’s A Gift to Remember by Joseph Robinette at The Strand (20 Third St., Dover). Performances are scheduled for Fridays, Dec. 6 and Dec. 13, and Saturdays, Dec. 7 and Dec. 14, at 8 p.m., and Sundays, Dec. 8 and Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. The play takes place on Christmas Eve during a snowstorm as a group of strangers are on a train to Boston from Bangor, Maine, and there are train engine troubles and track problems ahead. Tickets are $20 for evening shows and $18 for matinee performances. Visit breakaleglegally.com or call The Strand at 343-1899.
• The Concord Dance Academy invites you to its Spectacular Holiday Show at the Concord City Auditorium (2 Prince St., Concord). Performances are on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 1 and 6 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 8, at 1 p.m. The event includes a family baked goods sale, a holiday 50/50 raffle and a complimentary Santa photo. Tickets are $25. Call 226-0200 or visit concorddanceacademy.com.
• Bedford Youth Performing Company presents The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at the Derryfield School Theatre (2108 River Road, Manchester) with performances on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 8, at 1 p.m. The play is an adaptation of Barbara Robinson’s holiday classic that tells the story of the Herdmans, the worst kids in the history of the world, who take over the annual Christmas pageant. Ticket prices are $17.50 for adults and $16 for students and seniors. Call 472-3894 or visit bypc.org.
• Con Tutti will present a solstice concert with storyteller Tony Lee called “Sending You Light!” on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 7:30 p.m. at South Church (292 State St. in Portsmouth). Tickets cost $20 at contutti.org.
• The New Hampshire School of Ballet presents its annual holiday performance at the Dana Center (Saint Anselm College, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester). The event will feature students performing dances to festive seasonal songs on Sunday, Dec. 8, with shows at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Tickets are priced at $18. Call 641-7700 or visit anselm.edu/dana-center-humanities.
• Majestic Productions brings to stage A Christmas Story: The Musical at DerryOpera House (29 W. Broadway, Derry). Performances are on Friday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 14, at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. Tickets are priced at $22 for adults, $18 for seniors 65+ and $15 for children age 17 and under. Visit majestictheatre.net or call 669-7469
• Peacock Players present their Holiday Spectacular at Court Street Theatre (14 Court St., Nashua). This musical cabaret features holiday favorites and musical theater classics. Shows are scheduled for Friday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Dec. 14, at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets range from $12 to $18.Visit peacockplayers.org or call 889-2330.
• Safe Haven Ballet presents The Grinch, a ballet choreographed by Miranda Bailey, at the Chubb Theatre (44 S. Main St., Concord, ccanh.com) on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 4:30 p.m. Ticket prices range from $31 to $44. Visit ccanh.com or call 225-1111.
Downtown Concord’s annual Midnight Merriment event will begin at 5 p.m. Friday, Dec. 6. Many downtown businesses will remain open throughout the evening and offer special bargains and promotions to Merriment shoppers.
The event will be started by a Parade of Lights down Main Street.
Jessica Martin, the Director of Intown Concord is one of the organizers. She said Midnight Merriment has become a Concord tradition.
“It’s been 32 years,” she said. “It’s pretty great.” She said the whole downtown business community throws itself into the festivities each year. “Probably 80 percent [of the businesses] participate in some capacity,” she said. “It’s a fun alternative to online shopping.”
Throughout the evening carolers will stroll through downtown, and there will be s’mores and cocoa served in Bicentennial Square. Families will be able to take pictures with Santa Claus in front of the Statehouse. The Concord Art Market will set up in the Eagle Square Atrium to sell its holiday crafts and art in a “Winter Giftopolis.” Holiday music will be piped onto the street.
“There will be lit-up wreaths,” Martin said. “It will be a really festive holiday atmosphere.”
Martin said many downtown businesses will offer creative promotions for the evening. She pointed to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St.) as an example. “They will offer progressive discounts,” she said. “The later you shop, the bigger the discount.”
New this year is the Parade of Lights. Participants will march along Main Street, each lit up in some way. It is the brainchild of DJ Nazzy, the well-known local mobile DJ.
“The Parade of Lights is an idea that I had a couple of years ago,” Nazzy said. “I thought it would be something fun to bring to Concord and have people come downtown and shop and just be part of the season.”
At least 10 groups are signed up to participate in this first Parade of Lights.
“My vision is just to have Main Street lit up with the spirit of the season,” Nazzy said, “with people marching with lights and vehicles lit up, and just having a fun time. My dream would be to have people lining the streets and just everybody really getting into the season and just enjoying themselves. And then obviously we’re downtown so we’ll shop at local businesses.”
Midnight Merriment Where: Downtown Concord When: Friday, Dec. 6, from 5 p.m. to midnight. The Parade of Lights begins at 5:30 p.m. Main Street will be closed from Hills Avenue to Loudon Road from 4 to 6:30 p.m. to accommodate the parade. Parking downtown will be free on streets and in city garages after 7 p.m., but guests are asked to avoid parking in the Capitol Shopping Plaza (Market Basket Plaza) unless patronizing businesses in that location. More: intownconcord.org
More shopportunities
• Record Store Day Black Friday, Friday, Nov. 29, will feature special releases at area independent record stores; see recordstoreday.com for a list of releases scheduled for the day and a list of participating shops. Pitchfork Records & Stereo (2 S. Main St., Concord, 224-6700, pitchforkrecordsconcord.com) will open its doors at 8 a.m. See the website for a rundown of possible releases; while they can’t hold an item, they can confirm, if you call in advance, if they will have the title, according to the website.
• Great American Downtown (6 Main St., Nashua, 883-5700, downtownnashua.org) will sponsor Plaid Friday again this year on Nov. 29. Wear plaid to participating Nashua businesses, and receive discounts and special promotional deals. Check back with the website for updates on participating businesses.
• Manchester will celebrate Small Business Saturday, Nov. 30, with a kickoff event from 9 to 11 a.m. at Bookery (844 Elm St. in Manchester; bookerymht.com), which will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. “Pick up some free coffee, tote bags and a printed list of deals, while supplies last,” according to a Facebook post on the city’s Economic Development office’s Facebook page. At Bookery, they’ll offer games and a performance from the Ukeladies (slated to perform from 2 to 4 p.m.), according to the bookstore’s website. Mayor Jay Ruais and the Greater Manchester Chamber will be on hand; the chamber reported about four dozen Manchester businesses will be offering special discounts and promotions.
• Many Dover businesses will have Plaid Friday deals. Parking will be free downtown on Friday, Nov. 29. Visit the Dover Chamber of Commerce at dovernh.org.
• Shop at museum stores on Museum Store Sunday, Dec. 1. Museum Store Sunday offers a special shopping experience in one-of-a-kind stores, showcasing broad assortments of highly curated, unique, mission-related gifts. Participating museum stores include the Currier Museum of Art (150 Ash St., Manchester, 669-6144, currier.org), the SEE Science Center (200 Bedford St., Manchester, 669-0400, see-sciencecenter.org), Canterbury Shaker Village (288 Shaker Road, Canterbury, 783-9511, shakers.org), American Independence Museum (1 Governors Lane, Exeter, 772-2622, independencemuseum.org), Portsmouth Historical Society (10 Middle St., Portsmouth, 436-8433, portsmouthhistory.org) and the New Hampshire Boat Museum (399 Center St., Wolfeboro, 569-4554, nhbm.org). Visit museumstoresunday.org.
• Celebrate Cider Monday, Dec. 2. As an alternative to shopping online on Cyber Monday, some small businesses, especially independent bookstores, will offer a free cup of cider to customers. Participating bookstores will include Toadstool Bookshop (12 Depot Square, Peterborough, 924-3543, toadbooks.com), Balin Books (Somerset Plaza, 375 Amherst St., Nashua, 417-7981, balinbooks.com) and Innisfree Bookshop (Mill Falls Marketplace, 312 DW Highway, Meredith, 279-3905, innisfreebookshop.com).
• Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) will host a Holiday Book Recommendation Night with publisher sales reps, Wednesday, Dec. 4, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Experts will be on hand to help you find the perfect book for the most difficult-to-shop-for person on your list. It will be an evening of refreshments and refreshing books as publisher reps come out to share the titles they are most excited about. Gibson’s bookbuyers rely on our sales reps to point out upcoming titles to read and watch out for, and tonight you can get it straight from the source.
• And once you’ve shopped, the Griffin Free Public Library (22 Hooksett Road, Auburn, 483-5374, griffinfree.org) will host a Wrapping Party Saturday, Dec. 14, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.. Bring your holiday gifts to wrap. Paper, bags, tape, bows, ribbon and scissors will be provided. Holiday snacks and refreshments will be available. — Compiled by John Fladd
For downtown Manchester, the kickoff of the holiday season is the Manchester Holiday Parade and the road race that precedes it, The Santa Shuffle.
Barry Lewandowski is the Marketing Director of Millennium Running in Bedford, a company that organizes road races in New Hampshire throughout the year, including the Santa Shuffle, which he said is one of the high points of his year.
“There’s just such a fantastic mood,” he said. “You’ve got 2,000 runners in Santa suits stopping at four stations along the way for chocolate [snacks], mint, maple, and milk and cookies.”
The Shuffle is a 3-mile run through downtown Manchester, immediately before the Holiday Parade.
“A lot of times, running can be a solo sport,” Lewandowski said, “but this is a great chance for everyone to get together and have some fun. There are people trying to run fast, but generally, it’s a family event.” Santa Claus will be at this year’s run, he said, along with Miss New Hampshire, who will be dressed as a princess.
Lewandowski said the positive mood at the race is infectious. “There’s a continual festive spirit,” he said. “When you’ve got that many people dressed as Santa, it’s a little awe-inspiring. Looking down from City Hall on a sea of Santas, it’s just really fun.”
Sophia Koustas is the organizer of this year’s Holiday Parade. She said the theme of this year’s parade is “Light Up the Night.” “The theme was actually voted on by the community,” she said. “We ran a poll with about five or six different themes.” She said other potential themes were Vintage Holidays, Seasons of Giving, and Magical Creatures.
Santa Claus Shuffle. Courtesy photo.
For Koustas, the parade is personal. “I live downtown,” she said, “so it was a very heartwarming moment last year, you know, just being involved in the parade and seeing the community spirit that I don’t see on a day-to-day basis. It was just a very nice perspective of the city coming together to just celebrate and be together.”
Koustas is planning for a big parade this year. “Last year we had over 65 groups [marching in the parade].”I would say that we’ll have 65 to 70 groups this year.” The groups will include clubs, civic organizations, local businesses and marching bands. If the past is a guide, many of the groups will distribute candy to children watching the parade go by. “We don’t throw candy,” Koustas emphasized. “We pass the candy in order not to hurt anyone. So, yes, whichever organizations that are in the parade that would like to, absolutely, they can do that. They can pass that out.”
Listening to Koustas, it was easy to imagine this was a topic that had come up in planning meetings.
“Just to make sure that nobody gets hurt,” she clarified. “It doesn’t take a lot, just a little bit of caution.”
Much like Barry Lewandowski, Koustas is looking forward to the festive spirit that the parade brings to the community.
“It warmed my soul last year,” she said. Everybody was just ready to be part of it. The spectators were wonderfully aligned all along Elm Street. I had the opportunity toward the end to walk the parade, along with the floats once the last float had passed. It was just a very heartwarming moment. I’m looking forward to reliving that.”
Parade and Shuffle When: Saturday, Dec. 7 Where: downtown Manchester Stonyfield Yogurt Lil’ Elf Runs (100 yards) begin at 2:30 p.m. BASC Santa Shuffle Race (3 miles) begins at 3 p.m. The race will start and finish at Veterans Park on Elm Street. The first 1,400 runners to register get free Santa suits to wear during the race. To register and for more information, visit millenniumrunning.com/santa. The Manchester Holiday Parade starts at the Brady Sullivan Building at 1750 Elm St. at 4 p.m., and proceeds down Elm Street, finishing at Veterans Park.
Lights, trees and parades
Celebrate the season with lights displays, tree festivals and community gatherings
Find parades, tree lightings and more mostly outdoor celebrations of the season.
• LaBelle Lights at LaBelle Winery (14 Route 111, Derry) are now on display and will be open Tuesdays through Sundays (closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas) from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. until Sunday, Jan. 19, with different themes each week including Luau Week, Holiday Pajama Week, Ugly Holiday Sweater Week, Hidden Elves Week and more. Tickets range from $4 to $19 and are free for children 3 years old and younger. Visit labelle.com/lights.
• Bektash Shriners Feztival of Trees (189 Pembroke Road, Concord) features decorated artificial trees and wreaths up for silent auction. Refreshments will be available at Candy Cane Cafe. Hours are Wednesday, Nov. 27, Friday Nov. 29, and Saturday, Nov. 30, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 1, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tickets are $5 for those 12 years old and older and free for children under 12. Visit bektashshriners.org.
• Gift of Lights at NH Motor Speedway (1122 Route 106, Loudon) consists of more than 250 light displays spanning 2½ miles through a 150-foot tunnel from Thursday, Nov. 28, through Sunday, Jan. 5. This year the drive-thru light show will feature a 150-foot RGB Tunnel of Lights, arches, toys, and numerous scenes including the popular 12 Days of Christmas. Tickets are $35 per car load, $60 per bus, limousine or RV, and $2 in addition per person when there are more than 15 guests. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the New Hampshire chapter of Speedway Children’s Charities. Gift of Lights will open at 4:30 p.m. nightly, depending on weather conditions. Visit nhms.com.
• Plaistow Festival of Trees will be held over three days at the Plaistow Fish and Game Club (18 May Ray Ave., Plaistow, 382-3675, plaistowfishandgame.com). It will be open in the evening on Friday, Nov. 29, on Saturday, Nov. 30, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 1, from noon to 5 p.m. There will be a raffle table drawing and a tree drawing as well as a craft fair, snack bar and breakfast with Santa Saturday morning at 8 a.m. The money raised will benefit Children Less Fortunate.
• Milford’s 5th Annual Festival of Trees will be held on Friday, Nov. 29, and Saturday, Nov. 30,from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 1, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event will take place at the Colonel Shepard House (29 Mont Vernon St., Milford). There is an entry fee of $5 per person; $20 maximum per family, and children 8 and under are free. There will be more than 30 trees and baskets decorated by area businesses, clubs and individuals. Proceeds will go to support the Share Outreach program, whose mission is to provide food, clothing and emergency financial services to area families in need. Visit festivaloftreesforshare.org.
• Spooky World (454 Charles Bancroft Highway, Litchfield, 424-7999, nightmarenewengland.com) has transformed its Haunted Hayride into Holly Jolly Journey, a “magical winter wonderland.” New England’s Greatest Holiday Light Show will open on Friday, Nov. 29, at Mel’s Funway Park (454 Charles Bancroft Highway, Litchfield, 424-2292, melsfunwaypark.com). Kids 12 and younger get in free during opening weekend, Friday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Dec. 1. Experience millions of dazzling lights, immersive displays, festive photo ops with Santa and more most nights through Sunday, Jan. 12.
• Concord’s 39th Annual Christmas Tree Lighting Celebration (107 Main St.) is on Friday, Nov. 29, from 4 to 7 p.m. It will kick off the holiday season at the Statehouse plaza. There will be hot chocolate, hot cider, a hot food cart, a children’s costume competition, a magic show, a DJ, a burn barrel for marshmallow cooking, clowns, animal balloons, and the lighting of the Christmas tree when Santa does the countdown as he arrives via fire truck. Visit the event’s Facebook page @ConcordChristmasTreeLightingCelebration.
• The 15th Annual Southern NH Festival of Trees includes trees up for raffle, food, a scavenger hunt, a Polar Express train ride, entertainment by local schools, theaters, church groups and dance studios, baked goods and Santa. The Festival opens on Friday, Nov. 29, at 5 p.m. and runs through Saturday, Dec. 7, at 5 p.m. at the Sherburne Hall of the Pelham Municipal Building (6 Village Green, Pelham). Tickets are $5 for those 12 years old and older, free for children under 12. Raffle tickets are $5 for 25. Visit snhfestivaloftrees.pelhamcommunityspirit.org.
• Join Castle in the Clouds (455 Old Mountain Road, Moultonborough, 476-5900, castleintheclouds.org) for its annual tradition of Christmas at the Castle on Saturday, Nov. 30, Sunday, Dec. 1, Saturday, Dec. 7, and Sunday, Dec. 8., from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The historic Lucknow Mansion will be decorated and in the Carriage House there will be an artisan fair, hot cocoa and holiday cookies, a craft table and photos with Santa. Adult tickets are $25, children are $15, and children 4 and under are free. Tickets can be purchased on site or online through the Castle’s website.
• Celebrate Laconia hosts the Lights Festival Holiday Parade on Saturday, Nov. 30, starting at 5 p.m. with floats, bands, cars and more. The parade begins at Laconia High School (345 Union Ave., Laconia) and ends at Stewart Park for the annual tree lighting, where trees will be lit for the City on the Lakes Holiday Walk. Food trucks, music and activities will take place from noon to 8 p.m. Visit celebratelaconia.org.
• A Very Derry Holiday is on Saturday, Nov. 30, with activities from 1 to 8 p.m. It will be a fun-filled day of parades, activities, entertainment, shopping, visits with Santa and the downtown tree lighting. The Nutfield Holiday Parade will start at 1 p.m. at Veterans Hall. Visit the event’s Facebook page @VeryDerryHoliday.
• The Christmas in Wolfeboro Parade will take place on Saturday, Nov. 30, from 3 to 4 p.m. and will go from Brewster Academy (80 Academy Drive, Wolfeboro) to Mill Street, where Santa will light the community Christmas tree. Before the parade there will be a Gingerbread House Jubilee at Harmony Coffee House (21 Central Ave.). Visit wolfeborochamber.com/events.
• Zorvino Vineyards (226 Main St., Sandown, 887-8463, zorvino.com) will hold aChristmas Tree Lighting Saturday, Nov. 30, at 5 p.m. There will be a food truck and Bistro bar will be open, and the vineyard’s antique bus will be decorated and offering rides around the property. There will be a special reading of “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” before the lighting of the tree. This is a free event, but donations for the Sandown Food Pantry will be welcomed.
• The 53rd Salem Holiday Parade (Main Street, Salem) will start at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Dec.1. This year’s theme is The Nightmare Before Christmas. Visit salemnhparade.org.
• The Town of Bow holiday tree lighting ceremony is on Sunday, Dec. 1, from 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. at the Bandstand (1 Knox Road, Bow). The Bow Middle School chorus will be performing holiday songs, Santa will be there for visiting and there will be games, crafts, refreshments, food and a letter-to-Santa station. Visit bownh.gov.
• The Penacook Village Association will host the 19th Annual Penacook Tree Lighting ceremony on Wednesday, Dec. 4, at Boudreau Square on Village Street. Attendees can assemble around 5:30 p.m. to hear carols and singing featuring the Penacook Elementary School Chorus and Blanchard Family Singers, and watch Santa arrive courtesy of the Concord Fire Department.
Exeter Festival of Trees.
• Exeter’s 26th Annual Festival of Trees is free and open to the public on Wednesday, Dec. 4, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursday, Dec. 5, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Exeter Town Hall (10 Front St., Exeter). Decorated trees will be up for silent auction including a special tree filled with gift cards and certificates. Proceeds go to The Community Children’s Fund. Visit exeterareacharitablefoundation.org.
• The Southern New Hampshire Chamber of Commerce (81 Main St., Salem, 893-3177, southernnhchamber.com) will hold its Third Annual Festival of Wreaths Thursday, Dec. 5, from noon to 7:30 p.m. at the Searles School and Chapel (3 Chapel Road, Windham, 890-6259, searleschapel.com). There will be refreshments, music, and photo opportunities with Santa and his favorite elf, Buddy.
• The 9th Annual Raymond Festival of Trees will be at New Life Church (84 Nottingham Road, Raymond) on Thursday, Dec. 5, and Friday, Dec. 6, from 3 to 8 p.m.; Saturday, Dec.7, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday, Dec. 8, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Visit their Facebook page @ RaymondFestivalofTrees.
• The Bedford Women’s Club will host its Annual Festival of Trees on Friday, Dec. 6, from 4 to 7 p.m., and Saturday, Dec. 7, from 1 to 5 p.m., at Bedford Presbyterian Church (4 Church Road, Bedford, 472-5841, bedfordpresbyterian.org). Admission is free. Dozens of fully decorated trees with various themes will be on display to win in the raffle. There will be holiday merchandise from local vendors and musical entertainment by local performers. Santa will listen to wishes and pose for you to take photos. There will also be a free craft area for children, door prizes and more. Visit bedfordwomensclub.org/festival-of-trees.
• The 15th annual Dover Festival of Trees will take place on Friday, Dec. 6, from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Rivermill at Dover Landing (2 Washington St, Dover, 343-2192, rivermillnh.com). The event is free and open to the public. The festival will feature 35 elaborate trees sponsored and decorated by local businesses. The event also includes live choir performances, free goodie bags and a scavenger hunt for children, refreshments and holiday desserts, and Santa. Visit dovernh.org/FOT.
• Experience what Christmas was like 400 years ago at the Candlelight Stroll/Vintage Christmas at Strawbery Banke (14 Hancock St., Portsmouth) with decorated historic houses, role players and holiday traditions. There will be a bonfire, hot apple cider, performances by Ice Dance International’s Currier and Ives Vintage Skaters, shopping at Pickwick’s at the Banke and the “History Lights Our Way” candlelight stroll. Visit from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. or 6:30 to 8:30 p.m on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, Dec. 6 through Dec. 22, with an accessible and sensory-friendly stroll on Sunday, Dec. 15, from 2 to 4 p.m. Tickets are $32 for adults, $16 for children 5 to 17 years old and free for children under 5 years old. Visit strawberybanke.org.
• Goffstown’s annual tree lighting event, Friday Night Under the Lights, will take place on Friday, Dec. 6, on Main Street from 5 to 8 p.m. Visit goffstownmainstreet.org/friday-night-lights.
• The Salem Animal Rescue League will hold its Winter Carnivale and $2,500 Shopping Spree Raffle Friday, Dec. 6, from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Castleton Banquet and Conference Center (58 Enterprise Drive, Windham, 898-6300, castletonbcc.com). The event will feature an artisan chocolate tasting by Loon Chocolate, food and drink, dancing, live and silent auctions, games, a selfie station, contests, raffles and more. Tickets are $100 per person or $1,000 for a table of 10 and can be purchased at sarlnh.maxgiving.bid/about-us.
• Concord will hold a Parade of Lights Friday, Dec. 6, along Main Street starting at 5:30 p.m. as part of its Midnight Merriment Festival.
• Enter a haunted house with rabid reindeer and cannibalistic elves at Fright Kingdom’s Fright Before Christmas (12 Simon St., Nashua) on Friday, Dec. 6 (7 to 9:30 p.m.), Saturday, Dec. 7 (6 to 9 p.m.), Friday Dec. 13 (7 to 9:30 p.m.), and Saturday, Dec. 14 (6:30 to 9 p.m.). Tickets are $36. Visit frightkingdom.com.
• Hooksett’s Light Up the Village celebration will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 7, featuring a Santa Parade, photos with Santa, food and drink from The Robie Store, musical performances, a craft fair, a holiday storytime, caroling, and more. The goal is to raise $20,000 to light up key buildings in Hooksett. Visit lightupthevillage.wordpress.com.
• Brookside Congregational Church (2013 Elm St. in Manchester; brooksidecc.org) will hold its Brookside Holiday Lights Night on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. The evening will feature live music, nativity animals, winter carnival games, a fire pit, smores, a lighted story walk and more.
• Portsmouth’s Illuminated Holiday Parade and Tree Lighting is on Saturday, Dec. 7. The tree lighting is at 5:30 p.m. and the parade begins at 6 p.m. and goes from Islington Street to Market Square. There will be a Downtown Shop and Stroll immediately following the Parade. Visit cityofportsmouth.com/recreation.
• Join a festive gathering at the corner of West Merrimack and Franklin streets in Manchester, Sunday, Dec. 8, from noon to 3 p.m. for Merry Making on West Merrimack, a day filled with live music, live ice sculpture carving, seasonal crafts, more than 20 vendors, raffles from Manchester businesses and more.
• The theme of this year’s Hampstead Christmas Parade is “A Storybook Christmas.” The parade starts on Main Street on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 1 p.m. with refreshments and an appearance from Santa afterward. Visit @HampsteadColonialChristmasParade on Facebook.
• The theme for Merrimack’s Holiday Parade and Tree Lighting on Sunday, Dec. 8, is “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The parade begins at 3 p.m. at the Commons Shopping Plaza (515 DW Highway) and ends at the Town Hall parking lot (6 Baboosic Lake Road), where the tree lighting will take place. Visit merrimackparksandrec.org.
• The Christmas in Amherst Village House Tour will take place Saturday, Dec. 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sponsored by the Congregational Church of Amherst, this tour has become a favorite tradition. Ready for the holidays with traditional and unique decorating ideas, every home is unique in size and style and each will be a surprise. Tickets are $40 in advance, $45 on the day of the event. Online tickets must be purchased by Dec. 9 and will be mailed to participants. Visit ccamherst.org/cav.
• The 10th Annual Hollis Luminaria Stroll & Town Band Concert on Saturday, Dec. 14, will include more than 2,000 luminaria lanterns, a Santa tractor parade, holiday craft shopping, a chili and cornbread dinner, music performances in Monument Square, a gingerbread house contest and a bake sale. The stroll and tree lighting will be at 4 p.m. at Monument Square. The Lit Tractor Parade will begin at 4:30 p.m. Visit hollisluminaria.org.
• The Gilford Village Candlelight Stroll is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. The Gilford Community Band will perform at the Gilford Community Church. Make s’mores and visit Santa at Village Field, enjoy hot chocolate, cookies and craft making at Gilford Public Library and more. Visit their Facebook page @GilfordVillageCandlelightStroll.
• Pats Peak will have New Year’s Eve fireworks on Sunday, Dec. 31, from 9:20 to 9:40 p.m. There will be live music in the Sled Pub from 6 to 9 p.m. Visit patspeak.com.
Here are some events tailored to kid and family fun.
• There will be Family Gingerbread House Decorating sessions at the Goffstown Public Library (2 High St, Goffstown, 497-2102, goffstownlibrary.com) throughout December. Pre-built gingerbread houses and decorating supplies will be provided. Space is limited and registration is required. One registration per family. Visit the Library’s website for dates.
• Santa’s Wonderland 2024 at Bass Pro Shops, running now until Dec. 24, offers free Santa photo sessions (advance reservations required), a free shareable video with Santa photos, a Christmas toy shop for holiday gifts and more. Visit basspro.com/shop/en/santas-wonderland to reserve a time slot.
• Charmingfare Farm (774 High St., Candia, visitthefarm.com) has lots of holiday family fun on the calendar. The Christmas Tree Spree will be Friday, Nov. 29, and Saturday, Nov. 30. Admission costs $22 per person or $159 for four people and a tree. The day will also include visits with the barnyard animals, a horse-drawn ride, a visit with Santa’s reindeer and a campfire. Santa’s Christmas runs weekends through Dec. 22, plus Christmas Eve, Tuesday, Dec. 24. Pick a time when you buy tickets for either a four-person or a 10-person sleigh ride. The event includes a stop at the North Pole, Mrs. Claus’ Bakery, a visit to the barnyard, an opportunity to shop for Christmas trees, a campfire, a special mailbox for letters to Santa and the big man himself. The week post-Christmas, Charmingfare holds an Encore of the Lights event, where attendees can “climb aboard our horse-drawn ride and travel 30 minutes through Christmas light displays and see the reindeer at the North Pole,” according to the website.
Sleigh Ride at Charmingfare Farm.
• The Loon Preservation Committee’s Annual Holiday Open House at The Loon Center (183 Lees Mill Road, Moultonborough) is on Saturday, Nov. 30, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. It’s a day of family fun with horse-drawn wagon rides, holiday treats, balloon animals, kids’ crafts and a visit from Santa. Visit loon.org/loon-center.
• Brookford Farm (250 West Road, Canterbury, 742-4084, brookfordfarm.com) will celebrate Christmas With the Cows Saturdays, Nov. 30 and Dec. 7, and Sundays, Dec. 1 and Dec. 8, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. General admission tickets are $10 ($15 at the door) and children 3-12 years old are $7 ($10 at the door). Children 2 and under are free.
• The Educational Farm at Joppa Hill (174 Joppa Hill Road, Bedford) will host a Visit From Santa on Saturday, Nov. 30, from 4 to 7 p.m. Seasonal treats will be available at the Farm’s farmstand, and animals will be available for petting. Attendance is free, but donations to the Educational Farm are welcome. Visit theeducationalfarm.org.
• Elf Training Sessions are back at the Derry Public Library (64 E. Broadway, Derry). The sessions are Monday, Dec. 2, through Wednesday, Dec. 4, with multiple time slots each day: On Monday and Tuesday, there will be sessions at 3:30, 5:30, and 6:30 p.m. On Wednesday, there will be an additional session for infants starting at 10 a.m. followed by sessions at 3:30 and 5 p.m. Activities include elf-themed crafts, songs, snacks and storytelling. Visit derrypl.org.
• There will be a Christmas Holiday Program for children, ages 1-5 in the Winchell Room at Manchester City Library (405 Pine St., Manchester, 624-6550, manchesterlibrary.org) on Thursday, Dec. 5, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. where kids can make Santa hats, decorate trees, play games such as “Pin the Heart on the Grinch” and more. This is a drop-in program.
• UpReach Therapeutic Equestrian Center (153 Paige Hill Road, Goffstown, 497-2343, upreachtec.org) will host a “Deck the Stalls,” a Holiday Open Barn, Friday, Dec. 6, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. This free event is open to the public, featuring barn tours, the opportunity to meet some of the horses who live and work at UpReach, holiday treats, a hot chocolate bar, live music and an ugly holiday sweater contest.
• The YMCA of Downtown Manchester (30 Mechanic St. in Manchester; graniteymca.org) will hold a Brunch with Frosty on Saturday, Dec. 7, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., a free event featuring a pancake breafast, photos with Frosty the Snowman and more.
• Experience a Victorian Christmas at the Jones Farmhouse at the New Hampshire Farm Museum (1305 White Mountain Highway, Milton, 652-7840, nhfarmmuseum.org) on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Explore the decorated farmhouse and join in the holiday spirit with volunteers dressed in period attire. Tickets are $12 for adults, $8 for seniors (65+), $6 for ages 4-17, and children under age 4 enter for free. There’s a family pass available for $30, which includes admission for two adults and kids or grandkids. Visit nhfarmmuseum.org/event/victorian-christmas.
• The Millyard Museum’s (200 Bedford St., Manchester) Holiday Open House is on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event will include children’s holiday crafts, cookies and cider, old-fashioned board games, and a special visit with Santa Claus from noon to 1 p.m. Admission is free. Visit manchesterhistoric.org.
• Millyard Museum (200 Bedford St., Manchester) will also host “Home for the Holiday: An American Girl Tea Party” Saturday, Dec. 7, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Participants are invited to bring their dolls and join in a tea party. Tickets are $20 per person. Visit manchesterhistoric.org.
• There will be Mom and Me Gingerbread House Workshops Thursday, Dec. 5, and Sunday, Dec. 8, from 1 to 3 p.m. at the New Hampshire Farm Museum (1305 White Mountain Highway, Milton, 652-7840, nhfarmmuseum.org). This special workshop encourages the generations to come together in the kitchen at the 1760s historic Plummer Homestead. All supplies will be provided. The cost is $20. Additional gingerbread houses will be available for $15 each. There is a limit of 30 participants. RSVP on the Museum’s website.
• S’mores with Santa is returning to New Boston on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 4 to 6 p.m. Attendees can enjoy meeting Santa, making s’mores and sipping hot chocolate or cider while mingling with friends and neighbors. The gathering will also include singing Christmas carols and the official lighting of the Christmas tree. Santa will be present in the gazebo for the tree lighting at 4 p.m., and children are invited to visit with Santa afterward and bring an ornament from home to place on the town tree. In case of inclement weather, the backup date is Sunday, Dec.8. Visit newbostonnh.gov.
• The Friends of the Griffin Free Public Library will present a Santa Breakfast on Sunday, Dec. 8, from 8 to 11 a.m. at the Auburn Village School Cafeteria (11 Eaton Hill Road in Auburn). Santa will arrive by firetruck by 8:45 a.m., the menu with include pancake, eggs, sausage and more.Tickets cost $10 for adults, $5 for kids up to grade 8 and free for kids under 3. Contact [email protected].
• The 2nd Annual Breakfast with Santa will take place at the Bedford Event Center (379 S. River Road, Bedford, 997-7741, bedfordeventcenter.com) Sunday, Dec. 8, from 9 to 11 a.m. featuring a breakfast buffet, coloring and craft activities, a Mail Your Letter to Santa station, photos with Santa, story time with Santa, and more. Children’s tickets are $49 each, and adult tickets are $59, through planningpod.com.
• The Children’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St., Dover) is hosting its annual Jingle Bell Extravaganza on Sundays, Dec. 8 and Dec. 15, with sessions from 1 to 2:30 p.m. and from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Visitors can meet Santa, participate in hands-on holiday craft activities, experience a magical science experiment and receive a special treat. Pajama attire is welcomed for this festive event. Ticket cost $22, children under 1 year old are free. Online ticket sales end 24 hours before the start of each event. To reserve a spot, visit childrens-museum.org.
• There will be a Santa Storytime at Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com), Wednesday, Dec. 11, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Santa will read stories.
• Join the Milford Recreation Department for Breakfast with Santa on Saturday, Dec. 14, from 8:30 to 10 a.m. at the Milford Town Hall Auditorium (1 Union Square, Milford). Breakfast features pancakes and sausage and a visit with Santa. The event costs $10 per person, children age 2 and under can attend free. Seating is limited; register by Dec. 8. Visit milfordnh.recdesk.com.
• Santa Claus will helicopter in to make a stop at the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire (27 Navigator Road, Londonderry, aviationmuseumofnh.org) on Saturday, Dec. 14, according the Museum’s website. Santa is slated for touchdown at 11 a.m. and scheduled to stay for two hours (he’s scheduled to leave by fire truck at 1 p.m.). The event will feature hot chocolate, coffee, doughnuts and other holiday treats. Santa fans are asked to arrive at the museum by 10:45 a.m. The museum will be open free to visitors from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. (admission will be charged from 1 to 4 p.m.).
• Londonderry Access Center TV (281 Mammoth Road) will host Santa Live 2024 on Saturday, Dec. 14, from 1 to 3 p.m. Santa and Mrs. Claus will be present in the studio for children to visit and will be broadcast live on television. The event is free of charge operates on a first come, first served basis. Refreshments and coloring activities are provided for children while they wait. Each child will receive a gift and a candy cane. Parents are allowed to take pictures during the visit. Visit facebook.com/LondonderryAccessTV.
• Kimball Jenkins (266 N. Main St. in Concord; kimballjenkins.com) will hold two Holiday Tea Meet and Greet events on Saturday, Dec. 14, and Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. featuring a light lunch and tea, holiday crafts and dancers from Safe Haven Ballet holiday productions. On Dec. 14, meet The Nutcracker’s Sugar Plum Fairy and friends. On Dec. 15, meet The Grinch’s Grinch, Cindy Lou Who and friends. Tickets cost $40 for ages 13+ and $30 for ages 2 to 12, which can be purchased via the Kimball Jenkins website under “events.”
• The Concord Public Library (45 Green St., Concord, 225-8670, concordnh.gov/1983/Library) will hold a Teens & Tweens Winter Wonderland Candle Class on Monday, Dec. 16, from 6 to 7 p.m. in the Blanchard Room. Recommended for ages 10-17. RSVP required.
• Celebrate New Year’s Eve with a family-friendly event on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire (6 Washington St., Dover). The festivities include two “Countdowns to Midnight,” one at 10:30 a.m. during the morning play session (9 a.m. to noon) and another at 2 p.m. during the afternoon session (12:30 to 3:30 p.m.). The highlight is the glitter ball descent from the museum’s 30-foot-high Build-It Fly-It towers as the countdown reaches zero. . Reservations and pre-payment are required. Visit childrens-museum.org.
• The Concord Public Library (45 Green St., Concord, 225-8670, concordnh.gov/1983/Library) will host a Noon Year’s Eve Party on Tuesday, Dec. 31, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Ring in the new year at noon and celebrate with light refreshments and a special toast. Recommended for kids birth through elementary. RSVP via the Library website.
Symphonies and choruses provide many of the sounds of the season.
• There will be an open rehearsal of Handel’s “Messiah” on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 10 a.m., followed by a performance on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m. at St. Paul’s Church (22 Centre St., Concord). Visit walkerlecture.org.
• The Vienna Boys Choir will perform on Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 7:30 p.m. at the Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua). Christmas in Vienna showcases the gifted group of child musicians.Ticket prices range from $49 to $99. Call 657-8774 or visit nashuacenterforthearts.com. They will also perform at the Colonial Theatre (609 Main St., Laconia) on Tuesday, Dec. 3, at 7:30 p.m. Ticket prices are the same. Visit coloniallaconia.com or call 657-8774.
• Symphony NH is set to hold its Holiday Brass concert in Manchester and in Nashua. Catch the Manchester performance on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m. at the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St., Manchester, 668-5588, palacetheatre.org); tickets range from $29 to $39. The Nashua show is on Friday, Dec. 6, at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mary and Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church (39 Chandler St., Nashua), tickets are $40; call 595-9156 or visit symphonynh.org.
• The Manchester Community Music School’s (2291 Elm St., Manchester) Holiday Pops Concert is on Friday, Dec. 6, at 7 p.m. Individual tickets are $45, or attendees can reserve a table of 10 for $400. Visit mcmusicschool.org or call 644-4548.
• The Rockingham Choral Society will perform A Rose in Winter on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 3 p.m. at Exeter High School (1 Blue Hawk Drive, Exeter) and Sunday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. at Christ Church Episcopal (43 Pine St., Exeter). The concert will include secular, sacred and holiday works to evoke joy and hope, according to their website. Tickets are $20 for general admission, $18 for seniors and students, with children under 6 admitted free. Advance tickets can be purchased from members or online, with remaining tickets available at the door. Visit rockinghamchoral.org.
• Lakes Region Symphony Orchestra will hold its holiday concert “Take a Bough” at the Colonial Theatre (609 Main St., Laconia) on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 7 p.m. This annual holiday concert returns with a new selection of traditional carols with a “modern flair,” interpreted by husband-and-wife team Alex and Rachel Hunton in a grand orchestral presentation. Ticket prices range from $12 to $32. Visit coloniallaconia.com or call 657-8774.
• Merry Merry Canterbury Concert & Cocktailswill feature music from the Symphony New Hampshire Quartet on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 4 to 7 p.m. with music at the Dwelling House Chapel and appetizers and drinks in the Hubbard Gallery at the Canterbury Shaker Village (288 Shaker Road in Canterbury; shakers.org). Tickets cost $35.
• The Souhegan Valley Chorus invites you to a performance of Handel’s Messiah to experience the powerful voices of their choir and soloists accompanied by an orchestra. There will be two performances: one on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 7 p.m. at Mont Vernon Congregational Church (4 S. Main St., Mont Vernon) and one on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 4 p.m. at Milford United Methodist Church (327 N. River Road, Milford). Tickets are $18 for adults, $15 for students and seniors, with children age 12 and under admitted free. Visit souheganvalleychorus.org.
• The Manchester Choral Society on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 7 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. will usher in the holiday season with Martin Sedek’s “Gifts of the Season” at Ste. Marie Parish (378 Notre Dame Ave., Manchester). The concert also features Bob Chilcott’s “On Christmas Night,” which will include eight familiar carol settings that follow the sequence of the Christmas story. The Children’s Choir of Ste. Marie joins in under the direction of Katerina Nowik, along with harp, organ, oboe and flute, according to the website. Ticket prices range from $26.50 to $31.60. Visit mcsnh.org or call 472-6627.
• The Nashua Choral Society presents its annual Holiday Concert “Christmas Garland” on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. at Immaculate Conception Church (216 E. Dunstable Road, Nashua). The performance of holiday favorites will include selections from Handel’s “Messiah.” Adult tickets are $20, students $10, and admission is free for children. Tickets can be purchased through Eventbrite or Darrell’s Music Hall and at the door. Visit nashuachoralsociety.org.
• At the Concord Community Music School (23 Wall St. in Concord; ccmusicschool.org), the Canterbury Singers will offer a Holiday Recital and Singalong on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 12:10 p.m. (free). On Saturday, Dec. 14 at 7 p.m. the school will present a Holiday Folk Concert; tickets cost $25 for adults, $20 for students/seniors.
• Saint Joseph Cathedral (145 Lowell St., Manchester) will present a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” and Vivaldi’s “Gloria” on Friday, Dec. 13, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $20 per person online or at the door. Visit stjosephcathedralnh.org/cathedralconcert or call 622-6404.
• The Boston Pops Holiday Concert comes to the SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, 644-5000) on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7:30 p.m., conducted by Keith Lockhart. Tickets cost $57 to $92 and are on sale now. Visit snhuarena.com.
• The New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra is holding its annual Holiday Pops Concert at the Seifert Performing Arts Center (44 Geremonty Drive, Salem) on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7:30 p.m. and on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. The concert will feature Ron Goldstein’s joyful Hanukkah Medley, Tchaikovsky’s enchanting “Valse des Fleurs” (Waltz of the Flowers) and Polar Express, arranged by Jerry Brubaker. Visit nhphil.org or call 647.6476.
• The Tenors of New England will be performing on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 2 p.m. at Saints Mary and Joseph Parish at St. Joseph Church (40 Main St., Salem). A free will offering will be accepted, no reservations needed, and all members of the public are welcome. Visit thenewenglandtenors.weebly.com.
• The Rochester Opera House (31 Wakefield St., Rochester) hosts the Strafford Wind Symphony with a selection of holiday concert arrangements that celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah and the new year on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults, with free admission for children under age 12 but tickets still required. Visit rochesteroperahouse.com or call 335-1992.
• Family Holiday Pops with the Portsmouth Symphony Orchestra is a Music Hall event that takes place off-site on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 7:30 p.m. at Portsmouth High School (50 Andrew Jarvis Drive, Portsmouth). Visit portsmouthsymphony.org or call 686-8133.
• The First Church (1 Concord St. in Nashua; first-music.org) will present the 4th Advent worshop services “Christmas at First” with Cantata 61 with the Chancel Choir and First Music Chamber Strings on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.
It’s not all Hallelujah choruses. Here are some of the other musical and comedy performances on the holiday schedule.
• The Trans-Siberian Orchestra: The Lost Christmas Eve Tour heads to SNHU Arena (555 Elm St., Manchester, 644-5000, snhuarena.com) on Friday, Nov. 29, at 2:30 and 7 p.m. Other holiday shows at the arena include Cirque Dreams Holidaze on Tuesday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m.; the Boston Pops Holiday Concert on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7:30 p.m., and the Harlem Globetrotters 2024 World Tour on Saturday, Dec. 28, at 2 and 7 p.m.
• At the Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St., Manchester, 668-5588, palacetheatre.org), the schedule is packed, with comedian Emily Ruskowski’s Thanksgiving Leftover Comedy Show on Friday, Nov. 29, at 7:30 p.m.; the Rock This Show Orchestra’s Christmas Spectacular on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 7:30 p.m.; Symphony New Hampshire Presents Holiday Brass on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m.; The Scott Spradling Band Rockin’ Big Band Christmas on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 7:30 p.m.; The Eric Mintel Quartet A Charlie Brown Jazz Christmas on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 7:30 p.m.; a Celtic Christmas on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; the New Hampshire Gay Men’s Chorus Winter Holiday Concert on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 3 p.m.; two performances of Candlelight: Featuring Tchaikovsky & More on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 6 and 8:30 p.m.; Queen City Improv’s Holiday Show on Thursday, Dec. 19, at 7:30 p.m., and The Calamari Sisters’ Feast of the Seven Fishes on Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7:30 p.m. as well as Sunday, Dec. 22, at 2 p.m.
• At the Stone Church (5 Granite St. in Newmarket; stonechurchrocks.com) holiday offerings include Truffle Turkey on Friday, Nov. 29, at 7 p.m.; an all ages Christmas show featuring Dan Blakeslee and the Calabash Club and Jonee Earthquake Band on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7 p.m., and San Souci (a Jerry Garcia tribute) Holiday Special on Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m.
• At the Park Theatre (19 Main St., Jaffrey, 532-9300, theparktheatre.org) holiday offerings include the Park Theatre Tree Trimming Party with live music, mulled cider and eggnog on Friday, Nov. 29, at 6 p.m.; The Heather Pierson Trio with A Charlie Brown Christmas on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 7:30 p.m.; Josee Vachon & Patrick Ross: A French Canadian Christmas Concert on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 2 p.m.; Electric Earth Concerts Presents: Holiday Fundraiser: Horszowski Trio on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 4 p.m.; Project Shakespeare Presents: A Christmas Carol on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 4 p.m.; Granite State Ringers on Friday, Dec. 20, at 7 p.m.; Elvis Christmas Concert starring Robert Black as Elvis and The Elvis Band on Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7:30 p.m., and Mr. & Mrs. Fezziwig’s Player Piano Christmas Party on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 2 p.m.
• 3S Artspace (319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth, 766-3330, 3sarts.org) offersholiday happenings including Model Airplane’s Funksgiving on Friday, Nov. 29, at 8 p.m.
• Catch the Jonee Earthquake Punk Rock Christmas Show with Lobotomobile, DIrty Walter and the Smelltones and Raz to Stitchez on Friday, Nov. 29, at 9 p.m. at Shaskeen Pub (909 Elm St. in Manchester.
• At the Lakeport Opera House (781 Union Ave., Laconia, 519-7506, lakeportopera.com), upcoming events include a Thanksgiving ’80s Rock Party on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 8 p.m.; A John Denver Christmas performed by Chris Collins and Boulder Company on Friday, Dec. 6, at 7:30 p.m., and A Holiday Evening with Clay Cook on Friday, Dec. 20, and Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7:30 p.m.
• The Word Barn (66 Newfields Road, Exeter, 244-0202, thewordbarn.com) presents a 12 Nights of Christmas series this December. The shows take place at the Orchard Chapel (143 Exeter Road in Hampton Falls) and include Halley Neal and Sam Robbins performing songs from their album You and Me on Christmas Eve on Saturday, Nov. 30, at 7 p.m.; Rock My Soul Holiday Concert on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m.; Mr Sun. Plays Duke Ellington’s Nutcracker on Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 7 p.m.; Kat & Brett Holiday Show on Friday, Dec. 6, at 8 p.m.; Home for the Holidays with Dustbowl Revival on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 8 p.m.; A Cape Breton Christmas with Còig on Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 7 p.m.; Rasa’s Christmas: Folk Tunes & Holiday Cheer on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 7 p.m.; A Nova Scotia Christmas with Cassie and Maggie on Friday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m.; Ed Gerhard Christmas on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7 p.m.; The Heather Pierson Trio with A Charlie Brown Christmas on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 3:30 p.m.; the Jordan TW Trio Celtic Christmas on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 7 p.m.; A Celtic Christmas with Lunasa on Thursday, Dec. 19, at 5 and 8 p.m.; The Orchard Chapel Candlelight Carol Sing on Friday, Dec. 20, at 5:30 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 22, at 5:30 p.m., plus a family matinee version occurs on Saturday, Dec. 21, at 3 p.m.; and A Winter Solstice Celebration with Low Lily on Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m.
• The Majestic Theatre (880 Page St., Manchester, 669-7469, majestictheatre.net) presents A Piano Christmas featuring an interactive piano sing-along cabaret with Robert Dionne on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20.
• LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst, and 14 Route 111, Derry, 672-9898, labellewinery.com) has a holiday schedule that includes The Granite State Ringers Holiday Handbell Concert in Amherst on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 2:30 p.m.; Viva Las Elvis: Christmas In Vegas Concert in Derry on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 4 p.m.; Holiday Pops Concerts: Brass and Strings featuring members of the New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra in Derry on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 4 p.m.; Holiday Dinner and Show with NSquared Dance Company in Amherst on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 6 p.m.; Christmas with Neil: Tru Diamond Holiday Concert in Amherst on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 2 p.m.; Ice Princess Party & LaBelle Lights in Derry on Friday, Dec. 27, and Sunday, Dec. 29, at 3 p.m., and a Masquerade New Year’s Eve Party on Tuesday, Dec. 31, from 7 to 10:30 p.m.
• Nashua Center for the Arts (201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com) holiday events include Fairytale of New York,The Ultimate Irish Inspired Christmas Concert on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m.; Christmas with the Tenors on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 3 p.m.; Seán Heely’s Celtic Christmas on Friday, Dec. 6, at 7:30 p.m.; Big Bad Voodoo Daddy’s Holiday Party on Tuesday, Dec. 10, at 7:30 p.m.; Sara Evans’ 21 Days of Christmas Tour on Friday, Dec. 20, at 7:30 p.m., and Juston McKinney’s Comedy Year In Review 2024 on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 5 and 8 p.m.
• At Jimmy’s Jazz and Blues Club (135 Congress St., Portsmouth, 888-603-JAZZ, jimmysoncongress.com) holiday-themed shows include A Christmas Show with Sharon Jones and Company on Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 7 p.m.; Holiday Disco Vinyl Dance Party with The Glitter Boys in The Gallery at Jimmy’s on Saturday, Dec. 14, from 8 p.m. to midnight; Warren Wolf’s Christmas Vibes on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 7:30 p.m.; the Jane Monheit Holiday Show” Saturday, Dec. 21, at 7 p.m., and the Stella Cole Holiday Show on Monday, Dec. 23, at 7:30 p.m.
• Tupelo Music Hall (10 A St., Derry, 437-5100, tupelomusichall.com) celebrates as they often do with Gary Hoey’s Ho! Ho! Hoey! show on Friday, Dec. 6, at 8 p.m. Other holiday offerings nclude Wizards of Winter on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 3 p.m., and Adam Ezra Group playing two shows on New Year’s Eve, one with dinner that begins at 5:30 p.m. and another show that starts at 9 p.m. without dinner.
• The New Hampshire Gay Men’s Chorus offers four opportunities to see their holiday show, “Joyful!.” The chorus will perform Saturday, Dec. 7, at 7 p.m. at Christ the King Lutheran Church (3 Lutheran Drive in Nashua) with tickets for $25 plus fees. Next, the chorus will perform Sunday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. at the Bank NH Stage in Concord. On Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7 p.m., see the chorus at Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church (22 Fox Run Road in Newington); tickets cost $25 plus fees. The final performance in the series will be Sunday, Dec. 15, at 3 p.m. at the Rex Theatre in Manchester. See nhgmc.com.
• Capitol Center for the Arts (Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) has several holiday musical events planned. The New Hampshire Gay Men’s Chorus presents their Holiday Concert on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 3 p.m. at the Bank of NH Stage (16 S. Main St.). The Capital Jazz Orchestra presents Holiday Pops on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 4 p.m. Aat the Chubb Theatre (44 S. Main St.); NightOUT featuring the Free Range Revue takes place on Friday, Dec. 13, at 7:30 p.m. This is a celebration of The Nightmare Before Christmas at the BNH stage.; Mr. Aaron Holiday, a holiday party from the local family entertainer, is on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 11 a.m. at the BNH stage.; Cherish the Ladies: Celtic Christmas will take place at the BNH stage on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 7 p.m.; The radio show Greg and the Morning Buzz presents its annual Buzz Ball on Thursday, Dec. 19, at 7 p.m. at the Chubb Theatre.; The Heather Pierson Trio plays a Charlie Brown Jazz Christmas on Saturday, Dec. 21, at 2 and 7 p.m. at the BNH stage.; The Big Easy New Year’s Eve bash at the BNH stage on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 8 p.m.
• The Colonial Theatre (609 Main St., Laconia, coloniallaconia.com, 657-8774) has a stocking filled with holiday events that include Eileen Ivers Joyful Christmas on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 5 p.m. and Christmas with the Celts on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 7:30 p.m.
• Holiday shows at The Flying Monkey (39 Main St., Plymouth, 536-2551, flyingmonkeynh.com) include Seán Heely’s Celtic Christmas on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 7:30 p.m.; An Olde English Christmas with Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 7:30 p.m., and Fairytale of New York,The Ultimate Irish Inspired Christmas Concert, on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 7:30 p.m.
• At The Music Hall Lounge (131 Congress St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) catch MUSE: A Salute to Holiday Divas! on Sunday, Dec. 8, at 7 p.m.; T.3 – The Falalalonely Tour, a trio of Broadway performers, on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 8 p.m., and A Sinatra Christmas with Rich DiMare and Ron Poster at 5 and 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 18.
• The New Hampshire Theatre Project (959 Islington St., Portsmouth) will present Evening Lights: A Celebration of Joy and Illumination of the Holiday Spirit, according to their website. The party takes place on Tuesday, Dec. 10, Wednesday, Dec. 11, and Thursday, Dec. 12, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. All tickets are $50 and include refreshments. Visit nhtheatreproject.org.
• At the Dana Center (Saint Anselm College, 100 Saint Anselm Drive, Manchester, tickets.anselm.edu) catch A Cape Breton Christmas with Coig on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 7:30 p.m.
• Jewel Music Venue (61 Canal St. in Manchester) will present a Hachi Holiday Event with Sippy, Wonka Willy, Daze Inn and Audrey on Friday, Dec. 20, starting at 8 p.m. See jewelmusicvenue.com.
• The Strand (20 Third St., Dover, 343-1899, thestranddover.com) will feature a dance party on Saturday, Dec. 21, and Saturday, Dec. 28, both at 8 p.m.
• Pembroke City Limits (134 Main St. in Pembroke, pembrokecitylimits.com) will hold its PCL Christmas Block Party with Jordan Quinn on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 2 p.m. (with a Santa appearance, the website said).
• The Palace Theatre’s (80 Hanover St., Manchester, 668-5588, palacetheatre.org) holiday selection includes the annual Chanukah at the Palace featuring a musical performance by Bodi and starring psychological illusionist Kent Axell on Monday, Dec. 23, at 6 p.m.; Recycled Percussion multiple shows Tuesday, Dec. 31, through Sunday, Jan. 12, and comedian Jimmy Dunn ringing in the new year at the Palace on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 7:30 p.m.
• At Rochester Opera House (31 Wakefield St., Rochester, 335-1992, rochesteroperahouse.com) comedian Bob Marley will perform on Thursday, Dec. 26, at 8 p.m.; Monday, Dec. 30, at 8 p.m., and Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 5 and 8 p.m.
• There will be a Winter Ball at Phenix Hall: Home for the Holidays, Saturday, Dec. 28, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Phenix Hall (38 N. Main St., Concord). Tickets are $100 each. Visit eventbrite.com.
• At Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, will celebrate the New Year with a 21+ Drag Show Hosted by Karisma & Larissa Montes on New Year’s Eve, Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 10 p.m.
• Headliners Comedy Club has events for New Year’s Eve, Tuesday, Dec. 31, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Manchester Downtown (700 Elm St.) There are six packages that start at $35. There is a 7 p.m. dinner and an 8 p.m. gala of Dueling Pianos as well as an 8 p.m. comedy show in the Ball Room and the gala at 10 p.m. Comedians include Will Noonan, Dan Crohn, and Amy Tee. There is also a 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. show with the comedy stylings of Anne Powell, Tim McKeever, Dave Decker, and Joe Espi. Headliners will present two comedy shows on Dec. 31 at Chunky’s (707 Huse Road, Manchester) at 7:30 and 9 p.m. with Steve Scarfo, Kyle Crawford, and Dan Croh. Visit headlinerscomedyclub.com or call 988-3673.
Jason Hackler at the New Hampshire Antique Co-op Holiday Open House. Courtesy photo.
Feast your winter wondery eyes on some spectacular art at local seasonal exhibits, arts and craft shows, strolls and fairs.
• Twiggs Gallery will be holding its final exhibition, “GLOW,” marking the gallery’s farewell after a 10-year run, with their doors closing on Dec. 14, according to a press release. The show spotlights the work of its dedicated art instructors. Twiggs Gallery (254 King St., Boscawen, twiggsgallery.org) is open Thursdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m.
• Pillar Gallery + Projects’ newest exhibit is “NANO” and the show runs until Wednesday, Dec. 18 at the Pillar gallery (205 N. State St., Concord). “NANO” is a juried exhibition focused on smaller works. Visit pillargalleryprojects.com.
• The seventh annual “Small Works — Big Impact” holiday exhibit is now at Creative Ventures Gallery (411 Nashua St., Milford) and will run until Dec. 21, showcasing work in various media from more than 30 area artists, with most pieces smaller than 12 inches in diameter, making them ideal for holiday gifts. The gallery’s hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from noon to 4 p.m., Thursday from noon to 6 p.m., Friday from noon to 4 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Visit creativeventuresfineart.com or call 672-2500.
• The Craftworkers’ Guild shop in Bedford (3a Meetinghouse Road, down the hill in the library parking lot) is open for the holiday season. The shop is open in November Thursdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and in December Wednesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Sunday, Dec. 22. See thecraftworkersguild.org.
• “Small Wonders Miniature Art Show” is at the Mosaic Art Collective (66 Hanover St., Manchester; mosaicartcollective.com) through Sunday, Dec. 22. Mosaic is open Wednesdays through Fridays from 2 to 6 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 1 to 4 p.m.
• The Seacoast Artist Association (130 Water St., Exeter) presents its themed group show “Big Gifts Come in Small Packages” for November and December. Artists are challenged to create beautiful and affordable work, with each piece priced at no more than $100. The gallery is open Wednesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Holiday hours begin on Monday, Dec. 9: Monday-Wednesday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 a.m.; Friday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Sunday noon to 4 p.m. Christmas Eve hours will be 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Visit seacoastartist.org.
• The New Hampshire Antique Co-Op (323 Elm St., Milford, 673-8499, nhantiquecoop.com) will host its Annual Holiday Open House Friday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Dec. 1, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Enjoy refreshments and sweet treats, a gift card contest, a scavenger hunt with prizes, a gallery preview tour of the new fine art exhibition “Light and Brush: Luminous and Tonal paintings from the 19th Century to Present.”
• The Great New England Holiday Craft Market will take place at Labelle Winery (14 Route 111, Derry) on Friday, Nov. 29, and Saturday, Nov. 30, from noon to 9 p.m. Visit labellewinery.com or call 672-9898.
• Pipe Dream Brewing (49 Harvey Road, Londonderry) will hold a holiday craft fair Friday, Nov. 29, from 5 to 9 p.m., featuring more than 10 local vendors selling handmade crafts and other Black Friday Deals. See pipedreambrewingnh.com.
• Two Villages Art Society (846 Main St. in Contoocook; twovillagesart.org) will hold its 2024 Winter Members Show and Sale, “A Celebration of Light,” from Saturday, Nov. 30 to Saturday, Dec. 28. An opening reception with the artists will be held Saturday, Dec. 7 from noon to 2 pm.
• The Capitol Center for the Arts will hold its first Makers’ Market Saturday, Nov.30, at the Bank of NH Stage (16 S Main St, Concord, 225-1111, ccanh.com) from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Discover unique, handcrafted treasures from local artisans.
• The creators of Henniker Handmade & Homegrown are hosting an exclusive boutique shopping experience, Henniker Handmade Holiday, featuring 12 artists and makers. This pop-up event will be held in the Henniker Community Center (at New England College, 57 Main St., Henniker) on Saturday, Nov. 30, from 2 to 5 p.m. Locally crafted wares will include needle felted wool ornaments, honey, beeswax candles, soaps, skin care items, fine art prints, woodworking, hand-printed apparel, handwoven textiles, wine and jewelry.
• The Windham Holiday Craft Fair is hosted by New England Vendor Events and will be held at Searles School and Chapel (3 Chapel Road, Windham) on Sunday, Dec. 1, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Participants will be able to get a photo taken with Santa. Visit facebook.com/nevendorevent.
• Caya Reiki & Healing will present the second annual Winter Wonderland Craft Market & Psychic Fair on Saturday, Dec. 2, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Hooksett American Legion (5 Riverside St., Hooksett). The event will feature many vendors and artisans. They have partnered with Hooksett’s Light Up The Village tour, which will present a light ceremony near the Robie Store. Visit caya-healing.square.site.
• Wrong Brain Night Bizarre will featuring local artists and artisans on Monday, Dec. 2, from 6 to10 p.m. at Chapel + Main (83 Main St. in Dover; chapelandmain.com), with a $1 suggested admission donation.
• Starry, Starry Weekend will run Friday, Dec. 6, and Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 8, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Contookook and Hopkinton villages with participating locations offering artisan crafts, special events and more. See discovertooky.com/starrystarryweekend.
• The Contoocook Artisans Holiday Fair is set for Friday, Dec. 6 , from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday, Dec. 8, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at American Legion Post No. 81 (E.R. Montgomery Event Center, 169 Bound Tree Road, Contoocook).
• The Winter Giftopolis by the Concord Arts Market will take place on Friday, Dec. 6, from 5 to 11 p.m. during Intown Concord’s Midnight Merriment. This year’s event will be at the Atrium at 7 Eagle Square. Local artists and craftspeople will be selling their handmade gifts. Visit concordartsmarket.net.
• High Mowing School (77 Pine Hill Drive, Wilton) will host its annual Pine Hill Holiday Fair on Friday, Dec. 6, and Saturday, Dec. 7. Friday night is for adults, with shopping, music and a café from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m., and family festivities are on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Visit pinehill.org.
• The First Baptist Church (121 Manchester St., Nashua, 882-4512, fbcnashua.org) will hold its Olde-Fashioned Christmas Fair Saturday, Dec. 7, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. featuring a Christmas Cookie Walk, handcrafted items for sale, homemade jams, ornaments and other items handmade by church members. Santa will arrive at 9 a.m. and stay until noon.
• The St. Nicholas Fair will be held at Grace Episcopal Church, 30 Eastman St. in Concord, on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and will feature hand-crafted items, second-hand jewelry, baked goods, used books, and white elephant items.
• The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Milford (20 Elm St., Milford) will hold its holiday fair on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., including handcrafted items, a bake shop, and a carol sing-along at 1 p.m. Visit uucm.org/community/holiday-fair-2024.
• Arlington Street United Methodist Church (63 Arlington St., Nashua) will celebrate its Holly Town Fair on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The fair will feature handmade items, crafts, candies, baked goods and a cookie walk, with lunch available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Visit asumc.org or call 882-4663.
• St. Patrick Church (34 Amherst St. in Milford, stpatrickmilfordnh.org) will hold a Craft Fair on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. featuring a bake sale, crafts, a raffle, a silent auction and more.
• The Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Milford (20 Elm St, Milford, 673-1870, uucm.org) will hold a Holiday Sale, Saturday, Dec.7, from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be new and upcycled crafts, wreaths and holiday centerpieces, the Ritzy Boutique with gently used jewelry and household items, and a bakery. Breakfast and lunch will be available.
• The Somersworth Festival Association will host its Holiday Craft Fair on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Somersworth High School (11 Memorial Drive, Somersworth) They will only accept cash for food purchased in the cafe.Visit nhfestivals.org.
• The 35th annual Christmas in Strafford event, showcasing more than 50 artists and craftspeople across 29 locations, is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 7, and Sunday, Dec. 8, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both days. Organizers are asking shoppers to help “Soup-port” the town food pantry with donation of a can or box of soup, according to the website. Visit christmasinstrafford.com.
• Saint Patrick’s Parish (12 Main St., Pelham, 635-3525, stpatricks-pelham.com) will host its Annual Christmas Craft Fair in its Parish Center, Saturday, Dec. 7, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. featuring local crafters, food, a homemade baked goods table and raffles.
• The Unitarian Universalist Church of Manchester (669 Union St., Manchester) will hold its Holiday Gift Faire on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the fellowship hall. There will be a gift basket raffle, a cookie buffet walk, “It’s Better Than Take Out” frozen foods, tarot readings, a 50/50 cash raffle, gift shopping, a free holiday selfie photo area and more, according to their website. Visit uumanchester.org.
• The Concord Arts Market is hosting a holiday art market on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Kimball Jenkins School of Art (266 N. Main St.).Visitconcordartsmarket.net.
• The Animal Rescue League of NH (545 Route 101, Bedford, 472-3647, rescueleague.org) will hold a Holiday Fair Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. featuring pet photos with Santa or the Grinch (by appointment), craft vendors, tree sales, a bake sale and more. Visit rescueleague.org/holidayfair.
• There will be a Winter Market at Sanborn Mills Farm (7097 Sanborn Road, Loudon, 435-7314, sanbornmills.org) Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Farm’s workshop instructors will sell their wares. Warm refreshments will be available for purchase in the Sanborn Barn Dining Hall.
• The Holiday Artist Maker Fair will be held Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at French Hall (148 Concord St. in Manchester). See nec.edu/artatfrench.
• A Holiday Shopping Extravaganza will be held Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 8, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Nashua Community College (505 Amherst St. in Nashua) featuring 85 artisans, craftsmen and specialty foods. Admission is $5; ages 14 and under get in free. See GNECraftArtisanShows.com.
• Brookside Congregational Church (2013 Elm St. in Manchester; brooksidecc.org) will hold its Christmas at the Brook traditional New England Craft Fair on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. with a suggested admission donation of $1.
• The Nashua Holiday Craft Fair will have crafters, vendors, food and drink, Santa and will take place on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Broad Street School (390 Broad St., Nashua). Visit facebook.com/nevendorevents.
• Picker Artist Studios (3 Pine St. in Nashua; pickerartists.com) will hold its Holiday Open House on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Chapel + Main (83 Main St. in Dover; chapelandmain.com) will hold an Arts and Drafts Holiday Fair on Sunday, Dec. 8, from noon to 4 p.m.
• Glimpse Gallery’s (Patriot Building, 4 Park St., Concord) newest exhibit begins on Monday, Dec. 9, and runs through Jan. 9, featuring works from artists Pat Arzillo, Byron Carr, Julie Daniels, Mark Ferland, David Wiggins, Barbara Morse and Michael McCormack, as well as a selection from curator Christina Landry-Boullion. The opening reception will take place on Saturday, Dec. 14, from 5 to 8 p.m.; RSVP by emailing [email protected]. Visit theglimpsegallery.com or call 892-8307.
• The Holly Jolly Craft Fair will be held at the DoubleTree Hilton (2 Somerset Plaza, Nashua) on Saturday, Dec. 14, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. More than 75 artisans will be selling their holiday crafts, including holiday wreaths and centerpieces, reindeer and gnomes, country folk art and more. Visit joycescraftshows.com.
• The Christmas Holiday Craft Fair from Bazaar Craft Fairs will be held Saturday, Dec. 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Nashua Bingo Hall (166 DW Highway, Nashua). See Bazaar Craft Fairs’ Facebook page.
• The NH Audubon’s Annual Holiday Craft Fair is Saturday, Dec. 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the McLane Center (84 Silk Farm Road in Concord; nhaudubon.org) featuring 30 local crafters, a food truck, a raffle and more.
• The 2nd Annual Manchester Holiday Craft and Vendor Fair will take place Saturday, Dec. 14, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Club Canadian (128 S. Main St., Manchester, 623-9019, clubcanadianinc.com). Santa will be there all day, taking pictures for free. Visit facebook.com/nevendorevents.
• The 13th Annual Holidaze Bizaare from Wrong Brain is happening Saturday, Dec. 14, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at a new location, the Rockingham Ballroom (22 Ash Swamp Road, Newmarket). There is a $1 suggested donation. Visit facebook.com/wrongbrain.
• The Word Barn (66 Newfields Road, Exeter, 244-0202, thewordbarn.com) will host a Block Printing Workshop Sunday, Dec. 15, from noon to 2:30 p.m. Learn to make your own wrapping paper and bespoke gift tags. All materials will be provided, but bringing your glasses and an apron is highly recommended.
Find treats to eat and treats to give at these holiday events.
• Brookdale Fruit Farm (41 Broad St., Hollis, 465-2240, brookdalefruitfarm.com) will ship apples to friends, family or co-workers across the country. McIntosh, Cortland, Empire and Macoun varieties are available in 25 or 50 counts, beginning at $37.50 plus shipping costs. Order over the phone; personalized card messages are free.
• Place your order for Holy Trinity Cathedral’s (166 Pearl St., Manchester, 668-5087, holytrinitypncc.org) Annual Frozen Food Sale on Saturday, Dec. 7, 10 a.m. to noon. Quantities of favorite Polish dishes are limited; orders are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Order at holytrinitypncc.org/2024-htc-food-sale, or call the rectory at 622-4524.
• The Holiday Shoppes at Tuscan Village (9 Via Toscana, Salem, www.tuscanvillagesalem.com) runs through Christmas Eve. In November the Holiday Shoppes will be open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. In December they will also be open on Thursdays. The Market will be closed on Christmas Day. Vendors’ offerings include hot chocolate, arancini, kettle corn and other treats as well as jewelry, home goods, seasonal decorations and more.
• The New Hampshire Jingle Bells Winery Tour is running weekends through Sunday, Dec. 29, from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. For $65 for a single admission or $125 for a couple, sample wines and light hors d’oeuvres at 15 New Hampshire wineries and receive an ornament at each location. See eventbrite.com to purchase tickets and see the list of participating vineyards.
• The Christmas-themed cocktail pop-up bar Miracle will return to Portsmouth from Wednesday, Nov. 27, through Thursday, Jan. 16, at The Goat (142 Congress St., Portsmouth, 590-4628, goatnh.com/portsmouth). This year’s Miracle at the Goat will feature a kitschy festive décor and a themed cocktail menu with fan favorites such as the Christmapolitan and Snowball Old-Fashioned. New this year are Stocking Stuffer, Christmasaurus, Crooked Antler, Santa Slide and Koala Lalala. The venue is also offering a Santa/Mrs. Claus Brunch on Dec. 14, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• The Rockingham Brewing Co. (1 Corporate Park Drive, Unit 1, Derry, 216-2324, rockinghambrewing.com) will celebrate the holidays with three events: on Friday, Nov. 29, it will release its seasonal winter warmer, Winter Wonderham, flavored with allspice, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and orange peel (7.5% ABV). Sunday, Dec. 8, it will host a Holiday Artisan Market from 1 to 4 p.m.; six to eight local artisans will have handcrafted work to help with your shopping list, and the Teenie Wienies (403-2336, twprovisions.com) food truck will be in attendance. And on Thursday, Dec. 19, Santa Jake will make an appearance for photo ops, accompanied by Tommy’s Pizzeria (tommyspizzerianh.com).
• The theme for the 34th Annual Gingerbread House Contest and Exhibition at the Portsmouth Historical Society (10 Middle St., Portsmouth) is Holiday Memories. The event will run from Friday, Nov. 29, through Monday, Dec. 30, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (until 7 p.m. on Fridays). Vote for your favorite house between Nov. 29 and Dec. 18. There will be a series of Gingerbread House events for Historical Society members and for the public throughout December. Visit portsmouthhistory.org.
• The YMCA Allard Center (116 Goffstown Back Road, Goffstown, 497-4663, graniteymca.org/location/goffstown) will hold its annual Holiday Food & Arts Market Friday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Dec. 22, in the center’s lobby. The market will feature food as well as handmade crafts and art created by the center’s staff and members, according to a post on the Allard Center’s website.
• The Barley House Restaurant and Tavern (132 N. Main St., Concord, 228-6363, thebarleyhouse.com) will hold a Holiday Jingle Jam Saturday, Nov. 30, from 8 to 11 p.m. featuring DJ Maltese. This will be an evening of festive fun with karaoke, ugly sweaters, pictures with Santa, and festive treats all night long. Tickets are $15 through Eventbrite.com.
• Learn to build a Chocolate Holiday Cabin at Van Otis Chocolates (341 Elm St., Manchester, 627-1611, vanotis.com) Saturday, Nov. 30, from 9:30 a.m. to noon. Guests 21+ are welcome to bring their own wine or Champagne to enjoy during the class. Tickets are $75.
• Saddle Up Saloon (92 Route 125, Kingston, 347-1313, saddleupsaloonnh.com) will host two Holiday Sip & Shop events: Sunday, Dec. 1, and Sunday, Dec. 14, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. There will be live music, merry drink specials and holiday vibes. Warm up with a holiday drink as you browse unique handmade items from 20 local vendors.
• Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road, Manchester, 206-3888, chunkys.com) will host a five-course dinner-and-a-movie screening of Wicked on Sunday, Dec. 1, at 7 p.m., featuring dinner by The Farmer’s Dinner chef, Keith Sarasin ($110).
• LaBelle Winery (345 Route 101, Amherst, and 14 Route 111, Derry, 672- 9898, labellewinery.com) has a packed holiday schedule with events including a Cooking with Wine Class: Christmas Recipes Demo and Tasting on Wednesday, Dec. 4, from 6 to 7 p.m. (Amherst, $40), a Holiday Wreath Decorating Workshop on Wednesday, Dec. 4, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. (Derry, $124), a DIY Stuffed Knit Christmas Tree Workshop on Sunday, Dec. 8, 10 a.m. to noon (Amherst, $64), A Nutcracker Ballet Tea Party with SNHDT on Sunday, Dec. 15, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. (Amherst, $34), a Wicked Wine Pairing Dinner on Sunday, Dec. 15, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. (Derry, $85), a Holiday Cake Decorating Class on Thursday, Dec. 19, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. (Derry, $69), and a Masquerade New Year’s Eve Party on Tuesday, Dec. 31, from 7 to 10:30 p.m. (Amherst, $99).
• The Grazing Room at the Colby Hill Inn (33 The Oaks, Henniker, 428-3281, colbyhillinn.com) will offer several festive dining experiences this season, including a Currier and Ives Dining Room Experience on Wednesday, Dec. 4, a Christmas Cheer Menu beginning Wednesday, Dec. 4, “It’s Almost Christmas” high teas on Saturday, Dec.14, and Sunday, Dec. 15, a New Year’s Eve Sparkling Dinner on Tuesday, Dec. 31, and a Back to the ’80s Brunch on New Year’s Day. Visit the Inn’s website.
• Popzup Popcorn (Canal Street Mill, 22 Canal St., Suite 358, Somersworth, 314-8314, popzup.com) will hold its Second Annual Holiday Factory Sale, Friday, Dec. 6, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
• Averill House Vineyard (21 Averill Road, Brookline, 371-2296, averillhousevineyard.com) will hold a Snowman Felting Workshop & Wine Tasting on Friday, Dec. 6, at 6 p.m. (the cost is $50) and a DIY Sea Glass Christmas Tree Workshop on Thursday, Dec. 12, and Friday, Dec. 13, at 6:30 p.m. (cost is $55), and a New Year’s Eve 2025 Celebration Dinner & Wine Pairing, Tuesday, Dec. 31, from 6:30 to 9 p.m.
• The Canterbury Farmers Market will hold its final market of the year indoors on Saturday, Dec. 7, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Canterbury Elementary School (15 Baptist Road in Canterbury). See canterburyfarmersmarket.com.
• Zorvino Vineyards (226 Main St., Sandown; 887-9463, zorvino.com) has holiday events on the schedule including Holiday Sip ’n’ Shop on Sunday, Dec. 8, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. featuring local vendors (admission is free but register for a ticket online in advance). There will be an Oh, Snap! Gingerbread Decorating Night, Thursday, Dec. 12, beginning at 5 p.m. (21+, $45), and the Tidings & Tinsel group holiday party Friday, Dec. 13, starting with a cocktail hour at 6:30 and featuring dinner and dancing (the cost is $75 per person).
• There will be a Brunch with Santa on Sunday, Dec. 8, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Castleton Banquet and Conference Center (58 Enterprise Drive, Windham, 898-6300, castletonbcc.com). Meet Santa, and enjoy a brunch buffet. Tickets are $45 for adults, $35 for children and $12 for babies.
• 603 Brewery (42 Main St., Londonderry, 404-6123, 603brewery.com) will host two holiday celebrations this season: a Holiday Movie Trivia Night and Abominable Hopman Beer Release on Friday, Dec. 13, from 7 to 10 p.m., and an Ugly Sweater Party on Thursday, Dec. 19, from 5 to 10 p.m.
• Fulchino Vineyard (187 Pine Hill Road, Hollis, 438-5984, fulchinovineyard.com) will host a Christmas Festival Friday, Dec. 13, through Sunday, Dec. 15. with 90-minute slots to sign up to take family portraits with Mr. and Mrs. Claus. An adult ticket includes one free wine glass per adult and a complimentary wine tasting.
• Fulchino Vineyard (187 Pine Hill Road, Hollis, 438-5984, fulchinovineyard.com) will hold its Christmas Festival Friday, Dec. 13, through Sunday, Dec. 15. Bring your family. Have pictures taken with Santa. There will be artists, vendors and local craftspeople on hand to help you find the perfect last-minute holiday gifts. This event will take place inside and out, with complementary igloos and fire pits, and complimentary wine-tastings. Visit the Vineyard’s website.
• Assumption Greek Orthodox Church (111 Island Pond Road in Manchester; 623-2941) will hold a drive-through December foodfest on Saturday, Dec. 14, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Order via the website by Tuesday, Dec. 10, for options including boneless baked lamb, lamb soulvaki, avgolemono, spinach pita and Greek pastries.
• The Currier and Ives Cookie Tour will take place Saturday, Dec. 14, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and feature 16 stops at inns, restaurants, galleries and more in the Monadnock region. Cookie Tour tickets will be available starting Dec. 1. Tickets may be purchased at The Inn at East Hill Farm (460 Monadnock St., Troy, 242-6495, east-hill-farm.com) and Frogg Brewing (580 Sawyers Crossing Road, Swanzey, 547-7639, froggbrewing.com). Tickets are $20 per person and can be purchased with cash only. Visit currierandivescookietour.com.
• Celebrate a Not So Silent Night at Pipedream Brewing (49 Harvey Road, Unit 4, Londonderry, 404-0751, pipedreambrewingnh.com) Saturday, Dec. 14, from 6 p.m. until closing. The event promises to be Ho Ho Hopelessly Excellent.
• Make a weekend of cookie adventures with the 27th Annual Holiday Inn to Inn Cookie Tour on Saturday, Dec. 14, and Sunday, Dec. 15, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day at nine White Mountain inns stretching from Jackson to Eaton, with inns at least 15 minutes apart. See countryinnsinthewhitemountains.com/annual-holiday-inn-to-inn-cookie-tour.
• The Culinary Playground (16 Manning St., Derry, 339-1664, culinary-playground.com) has adult+child cooking classes including Cinnamon Rolls on Sunday, Dec. 15, from 10 a.m. to noon ($58 per team) and Homemade Pasta for Cheese Ravioli on Sunday, Dec. 8, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. ($52 per team). Adult class offerings include Cake Decorating on Sunday, Dec. 8, from 1 to 3 p.m. ($65), Focaccia Bread Art on Sunday, Dec. 8, from 10 a.m. to noon ($65), and Glazed Cinnamon Rolls on Sunday, Dec. 15, from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. ($55).
• There will be a Cookie Swap at the Rogers Memorial Library (194 Derry Road, Hudson, 886-6030, rodgerslibrary.org) on Saturday, Dec. 21, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Contribute four dozen of your favorite homemade holiday cookies and take home a wonderful cookie assortment! Please be sure to provide a recipe copy with your cookies. Registration is required.
• Salona Bar & Grill (128 Maple St., Manchester, 624-4020, facebook.com/Salona) will hold its Annual Christmas Party on Saturday, Dec. 21, beginning at 7:15 p.m. This is Salona’s biggest party of the year. Food will be provided. There will be a yankee swap ($25 gift); please bring a gift if you want to participate, and you will also take one home. There will be a contest for the most-swapped gift. DJ Davey Kay will play favorite Christmas carols.
Miracle popup at The Goat in Portsmouth. Courtesy of The Goat.
• The Atkinson Resort & Country Club (85 Country Club Drive, Atkinson, 362-8700, atkinsonresort.com) will host Santa’s Holly, Jolly, Holiday Party on Sunday, Dec. 22, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the Legacy Ballroom. Enjoy a buffet breakfast, craft activities for the children, photos with Santa (don’t forget to bring your camera), a story read by Santa, DJ entertainment and a dance party. Doors will open at 1 p.m.; guests should be seated for Santa’s arrival at 1:15 p.m. Visit atkinsonresort.com/holiday-events for ticket information.
• The Bedford Village Inn (2 Olde Bedford Way in Bedford; bedfordvillageinn.com, 472-2001) will hold its Feast of the Seven Fishes on Monday, Dec. 23, starting at 6 p.m. This 21+ dinner costs $125 per guest. The meal features passed and stationary hors d’oeuvres, three savory courses and a dessert station and is held in the Great Hall. Call or go online to reserve tickets. Other holiday meals include a Christmas Eve Three-Course Menu ($125 for adults, $75 for ages 10 and under) plus a Grand Dessert Buffet (4:30 to 8:30 p.m.); a New Year’s Eve Dinner with seating times from 5 to 9:30 p.m. ($110 per adult; see the website for the menu), and a New Year’s Day Brunch from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• The Birch on Elm (968 Elm St., Manchester, 836-1958, birchonelm.com) invites you to a New Year’s Eve night of elegant indulgence, Tuesday, Dec. 31, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $200 through Eventbrite.com and include unlimited passed appetizers, a raw bar, two drinks, and a Champagne pour when midnight nears.
• Shaskeen Pub (909 Elm St., Manchester, 625-0246, shaskeenirishpub.com) will hold its annual New Year’s Eve Bash on Tuesday, Dec. 31, from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. There will be an open bar, a free buffet, a free Champagne toast, and music by DJ Myth. Tickets are $60 through ticketleap.com.
‘Party hearty, Marty’
Find holiday films from The Polar Express to Scrooged
• Red River Theatres (11 S. Main St. in Concord; redrivertheatres.org) has its usual mix of big releases, like Wicked, and indies, such as the new documentary A Ride Ahead from Samuel Habib and Dan Habib, on the December schedule. For holiday-themed watching, the schedule includes Merry Good Enough, a 2023 release described on its website as “an indie, dark(ish) comedy about a dysfunctional family whose mom disappears on Christmas Eve,” through Thursday, Nov. 28, at 4 and 6:30 p.m.; Friday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Dec. 1, 1:45, 4 and 6:30 p.m. Catch Elf(PG, 2003) on Saturday, Dec. 14, and Sunday, Dec. 15, at 10 a.m. The Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life(1946) will screen Wednesday, Dec. 11, tentatively at 7 p.m. (check with the theater closer to the time).
• Apple Cinemas in Merrimack (11 Executive Park Drive) and Hooksett (38 Cinemagic Way) will play some recent holiday films. The 2018 animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas (PG) will screen in Hooksett Friday, Nov. 29, through Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 10:30 and 12:45 p.m. in Hooksett and daily through Thursday, Dec. 5, in Merrimack. Elf(PG, 2003) will screen once daily Friday, Dec. 6, through Thursday, Dec. 12 at both theaters. The 2000 live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas(PG) will screen Friday, Dec. 20, through Thursday, Dec. 26, at noon, at Hooksett and once daily at Merrimack.
• Cinemark Rockingham Park (The Mall at Rockingham Park, 15 Mall Road in Salem; cinemark.com) will feature family films as part of its Holiday Movie Clubhouse. Saturday, Nov. 30, at 11:30 a.m. and Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 6 p.m. catch Elf(PG, 2003). Catch The Polar Express (G, 2004) on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 12:25 p.m. and Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 6 p.m. The 2000 live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas(PG) will screen Saturday, Dec. 14, at 10:30 a.m. and Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 6:30 p.m.
• The Flying Monkey (39 S. Main St. in Plymouth; flyingmonkeynh.com) kicks off its December slate of movies with the live-action adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (PG, 2000) starring Jim Carrey on Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 6 p.m. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (PG-13, 1989) will screen Thursday, Dec. 5, at 6 p.m. The Polar Express (G, 2004) will screen Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 6 p.m. Love Actually (R, 2003) will screen Thursday, Dec. 12, at 6 p.m. Elf (PG, 2003) will screen Wednesday, Dec. 18, at 6 p.m. A Christmas Story (PG, 1983) will screen on Thursday, Dec. 19, at 6 p.m. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) will screen Saturday, Dec. 21, at 1 p.m. For all films, doors open an hour before. The month finishes off with a film that gives New Year’s Eve party vibes — Baz Luhrmann’s 2013The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which screens Saturday, Dec. 28, at 1 p.m.
• Fathom Events (fathomevents.com) has several holiday screenings on its schedule, with the films playing at multiple area theaters. The concert film For King + Country’s A Drummer Boy Christmas Live will screen Thursday, Dec. 5, through Monday, Dec. 9, at area theaters including Apple Cinemas Merrimack & Hooksett, Cinemark Rockingham Park in Salem and Regal Fox Run in Newington. André Rieu’s Christmas Concert will screen Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 7 p.m. at Apple Cinemas Merrimack & Hooksett, Cinemark Rockingham Park in Salem and Regal Fox Run in Newington and on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 3 p.m. at those same theaters. I Am the Immaculate Conception (2024) will screen at Apple Cinemas Merrimack & Hooksett, O’neil Cinemas Brickyard Square in Epping and Regal Fox Run in Newington on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 7 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 14, at 4 p.m. and Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. White Christmas (1954) starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney will screen in a 70th anniversary presentation at O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square in Epping, Cinemark Rockingham Park in Salem and Regal Fox Run in Newington on Sunday, Dec. 15, at 1 p.m. (also 1:30 and 7 p.m. at Regal Fox Run) and on Monday, Dec. 16, at 7 p.m., and at Cinemark Rockingham Park in Salem and Regal Fox Run in Newington on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 7 p.m. A broadcast of The Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker will screen on Sunday, Dec. 22, at 3 p.m. at O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square in Epping and Regal Fox Run in Newington and Monday, Dec. 23, at 7 p.m. at Regal Fox Run.
• Chunky’s Cinema Pub (707 Huse Road in Manchester; chunkys.com) has a packed holiday schedule. A 21+ screening of Scrooged (PG-13, 1988), the Bill Murray take on A Christmas Carol, will take place Thursday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m. The Polar Express (G, 2004) will screen Friday, Dec. 6, through Thursday, Dec. 19; tickets are on sale now and include regular admission tickets and a ticket that comes with a bell and a Santa cookie. Special screenings include the Monday, Dec. 9, and Monday, Dec. 16, 5:30 p.m., which include a visit from Santa Claus, and the Wednesday, Dec. 11, screening at 11:30 a.m., which is sensory-friendly. A 21+ screening of Elf (PG, 2003) will screen Thursday, Dec. 12, at 8 p.m. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) will screen Sunday, Dec. 15, at 7 p.m. On Thursday, Dec. 19, an Ugly Christmas Sweater party accompanies a 21+ screening of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (PG-13, 1989) with prizes for ugly sweaters.
Other holiday-themed events at Chunky’s include a 21+ trivia night about classic Christmas music on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 7:30 p.m.; a 21+ trivia night about classic Christmas movies on Thursday, Dec. 19, at 7:30 p.m.; a Nightmare Before Christmas paint and party event on Friday, Dec. 27, at 8 p.m.; a family-friendly performance with comedy illusionist Ben Pratt on Sunday, Dec. 29, at 4 and 7 p.m.; 21+ “The New Year” scratch ticket bingo on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 6:30 p.m., and a New Year’s Eve drag show on Tuesday, Dec. 31, at 10 p.m.
• The Magic Flute, an encore broadcast of The MET: Live in HD, will screen at BNH Stage (16 Main St. in Concord, ccanh.com) and via Fathom Events (fathomevents.com) at Apple Cinemas in Merrimack and Hooksett, O’neil Cinemas at Brickyard Square in Epping and Regal Fox Run in Newington on Saturday, Dec. 7, at 1 p.m.
• Park Theatre (19 Main St., Jaffrey, theparktheatre.org) will screen the silent film Oliver Twist(1922) starring Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney and featuring live musical accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis on Friday, Dec. 13, at 7 p.m. as part of the theater’s Dickens Fest programing. The screening will include a 10-minute adaptation of A Christmas Carolproduced in 1910 by Thomas Edison, according to silentfilmlivemusic.blogspot.com. The Park will also screen A Christmas Story (PG, 1983) on Saturday, Dec. 14, at 1 p.m. as part of the theater’s Santa Party which features a sing-along with Santa, free popcorn and a candy cane (first come first served). It’s A Wonderful Life(1946) will screen Dec. 14 at 7 p.m.
• The Strand (20 Third St., Dover, 343- 1899, thestranddover.com) will screen Elf (PG, 2003) as part of its annual Christmas Break on a Budget event, which will also include cookie decorating, snowflake making, paper chain making and a storytime starting at noon on Saturday, Dec. 21. Admission costs $20 for a family (up to four people) or $8 per person. “Kids and adults can bring your pillows and blanks and find a spot on the dance floor to watch the movie,” according to the website.
The time between Thanksgiving and the end of the year is pie season.
“That is true,” Alison Ladman confirmed. She is the owner of and head baker at the Crust and Crumb Baking Co. in Concord. “We make a lot of pies this time of year. A whole lot of pies.” She said her feelings on pies get complicated toward the end of the year.
“Yeah. Um, my feelings on pie…,” Ladman said. “Look, it’s the month of November. We eat, drink and breathe pie and rolls for the whole month. By the end of the month we’re all very sick of pie. But they are so good! There are lots of different flavors of pie. There are so many different ways that you can make a pie. [Pie is] one of those ‘there’s something for everybody’ kind of dishes.”
To put some perspective on Ladman’s “eat, drink and breathe pies” experience: Her bakery bakes 1,100 pies in two days during Thanksgiving week, all of which are rolled out by hand.
“We do use a sheeter for some of our smaller things, but for the bigger pies it’s just better to hand roll them,” she said.
So much experience has honed Ladman’s crust technique.
“We have a variety of rolling pins here, because everybody likes something different,” she said. “We have the kind that are a straight dowel, we have the kind that are a tapered dowel, and we have the kind with handles. I personally prefer a tapered dowel. I feel like I have better control over [the dough with] it. If you have a part on the edge that needs to be rounded out a little bit more, you can kind of turn it a little bit better with the taper.”
She likes to roll the dough out on a floured wooden table. “We do crumb toppings on almost all of our pies versus a double-crusted pie,” she said. “Crumb toppings are a different method of production than doing a double-crust, so we need to kind of pick one way or the other.”
And then there are cream pies, with a crumb crust. “We make them all completely from scratch here,” Ladman said, “And that includes making the graham crackers, because we’re gluttons for punishment.”
Most bakeries with a reputation for pies find themselves similarly snowed under with orders at this time of the year. Jakie O’Dowd, the owner of The Sweet Spot in Weare, thinks that there is a huge demand for pies during the holidays but that many home bakers lack confidence.
“I think what mainly holds people back from doing pies is that working with the pie dough can be tricky,” she said. “I feel like Thanksgiving is our biggest holiday, and I think it’s because people are intimidated. But I actually find it very fun and rewarding. At Thanksgiving time, we literally do hundreds of pies, and in the midst of it I’ll think, ‘Oh, let me do pie again.’”
O’Dowd had a very traditional introduction to pie-making.
“I worked at a farm down in Littleton, Mass., called Springbrook Farm,” she said. “They’re one of the oldest farms in Massachusetts — in fact, the land was deeded to the owners by King George, and it’s still in the same family. All their baking that I learned there was very traditional, very old-school. So I make pies in an old-fashioned way; the crust I use is the crust that I learned at the farm. It’s partial butter, partial shortening, so you’ve got the flavor from the butter and the flakiness from the shortening. It’s a really nice pie dough to work with.”
The Sweet Spot bakes traditional holiday pies for its customers, but O’Dowd said it has been an education to learn what that means in different families.
“I didn’t even put chocolate cream pie on the menu our first year,” she said, “and everyone was calling and asking for it, and I was losing orders. So it’s on there now because people want to take one apple pie, one chocolate, and they’ll take one of each, and then they’ll order rolls. I feel like apple and chocolate cream are our biggest pie orders, but you get a lot of pumpkin too. Apple is our No. 1, then chocolate cream and pumpkin might be tied for second.”
Lauren Collins-Cline, the owner of Slightly Crooked Pies in Bedford, sympathizes with home bakers who find pie crusts intimidating.
“Interestingly, we don’t have a strong pie tradition in my family,” she said. “We had pies for Thanksgiving, but we would buy them. My pie story started when I hosted my first Thanksgiving and I wanted to make a pie and I wanted to make it from ‘scratch.’ I use air quotes around that because I used a store-bought crust that year. I looked up a recipe online and I made the pie and people loved it. It was the highlight of the meal and that gratification was so strong for me that I just kept making and working on and perfecting pies. Pies are a total confidence-builder. I want to quote Tommy Lasorda and say, if I can do it, you can do it. Because, again, like when I started out, I was just — I was dangerous in the kitchen. It was a big risk for me to be in the kitchen. So my encouragement is to start to find a simple recipe and just give it a try.”
Another problem, she said, was the pressure from food media to make fancier and fancier recipes each year.
“Content is king,” she said. “[Food writers] have to constantly be reinventing their content. And bless the people who get paid to do that — that sounds like a dream job. But how many times in a day do you see people sharing a recipe that they saw that takes this new spin on an old classic? Don’t limit yourself because you’re intimidated by that high level of expertise. Just baby steps, you gotta start somewhere.”
Collins-Cline said she thinks pies are tied in with our image of tradition and of ourselves as Americans. “It is a nostalgic dessert,” she said. “A pie often has a recipe that gets carried down through families. It’s something that may not be as awe-striking in appearance as cake can be, but when you look at it it’s like the tea kettle on the stove. It just evokes this image of grandma in an apron serving it at the table.”
Or buy your pie If you’d prefer to order a pie this holiday season, check out our listing of Thanksgiving take-out offerings, which includes quite a lot of pie, in the Nov. 14 issue of the Hippo. Find the issue in the digital library at hippopress.com; the story is on page 22.
Pie recipes
Most families have their own traditional pie recipes. Here are nine recipes from area pie enthusiasts that have proven track records.
Cranberry Pie
Debbie Bouvier, New Boston
This recipe from my wife is a holiday crowd-pleaser:
1 cup (198 g) sugar
1 lb. fresh cranberries (454 g or 1⅓ 12-ounce bags)
Zest of 1 medium orange
Juice of 1 medium orange
Premade pie dough
2 Tablespoons milk
Cranberry Pie. Photo by John Fladd.
Place one of the pre-made crusts in a pie pan and crimp the edges. Use a fork to poke holes in the bottom of the crust [what bakers call “docking”]. Par-bake the bottom crust for about 15 minutes at 375°F.
Wash the cranberries. Place in a pot with the orange juice, orange zest and sugar. Cook on medium heat until a third to half of the cranberries have popped and the mixture is thick. Stir frequently.
Once cooked, pour the mixture into the par-baked crust. The pie looks best when topped with either a lattice top or some cutouts. Cutouts can be easily done with cookie cutters. Once satisfied with the top, brush it with milk.
Bake for approximately 35 minutes at 400°F.
While many holiday foods are heavy and serious, this is tart and citrussy. It makes an excellent holiday dessert, especially with vanilla ice cream.
Butterscotch Pie
John Fladd, Hippo Food and Drink Guy
I’m a huge fan of butterscotch, and I like the flavor that comes from using real butter and real scotch.
4½ Tablespoons butter
¾ cup (160 g) brown sugar
¾ cup (170 g) boiling water
2¼ Tablespoons cornstarch
1½ Tablespoons all-purpose flour
⅓ teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt
1¼ cups (284 g) milk
3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 Tablespoon scotch – I find I get the best, most butterscotch flavor from Glenlivet
The key instruction for this recipe is “whisk.”
Melt butter over low heat, and cook to a golden brown. Whisk in the brown sugar. It will seem really stiff at first, but the sugar will melt within a couple of minutes and become liquidy. Whisk it continuously until it comes to a boil, then whisk in the boiling water. Be careful; it will spit a bit at first. Whisk the mixture together, then remove from the heat.
Separately, whisk the cornstarch, flour, salt and milk until they are completely combined, then whisk them into the brown sugar mixture, return it to the heat, and bring it to a boil. Let it boil for a minute or so, whisking constantly, then remove it from the heat again.
Very carefully, temper in the egg yolks. This means stir a spoonful of the hot mixture into the yolks at a time, until you have gradually brought them up to temperature and diluted them enough that they won’t scramble when you add them to the hot pudding mixture.
Whisk them into the hot pudding mixture, then whisk in the scotch. Adjust the amount of whiskey to your taste.
Let the mixture cool for 20 minutes, then transfer it to a pre-baked (what bakers call “blind baked”) pie shell, then chill for several hours. Serve with whipped cream. If you wanted to add scotch to the whipped cream instead of vanilla, who could blame you?
This is an adult’s butterscotch. The real butter, the caramelized brown sugar, and the scotch combine for a deep, mature butterscotch that is about as far from a butterscotch candy as a pinot noir is from a grape soda.
Maple Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Streusel
Denise Nickerson, owner of the Bakeshop on Kelley Street
9-inch pie crust of your choice
1 15-ounce can puree of pumpkin
1 cup heavy cream
3 eggs
⅔ cup (206 g) maple syrup
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon salt
Place all ingredients in a bowl and whisk until combined. Pour into an unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and add topping in a ring around the top edge of the pie. Bake an additional 20 to 25 minutes, until a butter knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Topping
1 cup (120 g) all-purpose flour
1 cup (213 g) brown sugar or maple sugar
½ cup (1 stick) melted butter (less if using maple sugar)
½ cup (57 g) chopped pecans
Combine all the topping ingredients in a bowl with a fork.
Peanut Butter Pie
Evelyn Redmond, organizer of Goffstown’s Annual Pie Competition and Auction: “I won my first blue ribbon with this pie recipe.”
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp (300 g) creamy peanut butter, divided
1 11.75-ounce jar Smucker’s® Hot Fudge Spoonable Ice Cream Topping, divided
Beat together 1 cup of peanut butter, cream cheese and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed, until well-combined. Gently mix in 3 cups of whipped topping until thoroughly combined. Spoon the mixture into the pie shell. Using a spatula, smooth and spread mixture to the edges of the pie.
Set aside 2 tablespoons hot fudge in a resealable bag. Warm the remaining hot fudge and spread it over the pie. Refrigerate until fully set, then spread remaining whipped topping on top.
Reserve 2 tablespoons of hot fudge topping into the corner of a resealable food storage bag and set it aside. Microwave the remaining topping on high for 1 minute. Stir. Spread topping over pie, covering the entire peanut butter layer. Refrigerate until fully set. Spread the remaining whipped topping (1½ cups) over the hot fudge layer, trying not to mix the two layers.
Cut a small corner from the bag containing the hot fudge topping. Squeeze the bag to drizzle topping over the pie. Place remaining 2 tablespoons peanut butter in a resealable food storage bag; cut bag corner and squeeze to drizzle in the opposite direction of the topping. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Maple Bourbon Pecan Pie
Leah Borla, owner of Sweet Love Bakery in Goffstown
6 Tablespoons (¾ of a stick) butter
1 cup packed (198 g) light brown sugar
1 cup (312 g) real maple syrup
3 Tablespoons maple bourbon (regular bourbon works too)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1½ (170 g) cups pecans
A 9-inch pie crust (store-bought is OK!)
Heat oven to 350°F. Place pecans on a baking sheet and toast for 3-4 minutes until brown. Remove from the oven and let cool. You can also pan-roast them on medium-low heat until they are fragrant.
In a medium-size saucepan, over medium heat, melt butter. Add brown sugar and maple syrup and stir until the brown sugar is fully dissolved. Bring the mixture up to a simmer, then remove from heat. Place in a bowl to cool for about 10 minutes.
Whisk eggs and add to the butter-sugar mixture. Add in bourbon, cinnamon, vanilla and salt, whisking together until well blended. Pour mixture into uncooked pie shell.
Place toasted pecans on top of the sugar filling. Place pie on a baking sheet. Lightly spray a piece of foil with cooking spray and place over the pie. Bake pie in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 20-25 minutes until the edges of the pie are set. The center will be slightly jiggly but will set.
Place on rack until cool. Serve with fresh cinnamon maple whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
Sweet Potato and Pecan Pie
Addie Leader-Zavos, Eden’s Table Farm: “This double-layered pie has a pecan pie baked on top of the sweet potato filling. It is a favorite in my family for Hanukkah.”
1 partially baked 10-inch pie crust (baked for 15 minutes at 375°F)
For the pecan topping:
1 large egg
⅗ cup (119 g) light brown sugar
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup (115 g) coarsely chopped pecans (I use halves on top — chop half of the bag to mix in the topping. Use the rest to make a design on top.)
For the sweet potato filling:
4 large egg yolks
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup (160 g) dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons orange juice
2 cups (450 g) cooked sweet potatoes, pureed in a blender, then cooled
¼ cup (57 g) creme fraiche
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Have your pie crust ready.
For the pecan topping: In a small bowl, whisk the egg, light brown sugar, melted butter, vanilla and salt until blended to a smooth mixture. Stir in the pecans. Set aside.
For the sweet potato filling: Beat the egg yolks, salt, and dark brown sugar in a large bowl, and beat with an electric mixer until creamy. Mix in the cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and lemon juice. Add the sweet potatoes and mix until smooth, about 1 minute. Mix in the creme fraiche until well-combined.
Pour the filling into the partially baked crust, discarding any fiber from the sweet potatoes that clings to the beaters. Bake for 20 minutes, then gently pour the pecan mixture over the partially baked pie. Bake until the pecan topping is set, about 30 minutes longer. Cool on a wire rack. Serve at room temperature.
Paper Bag Apple Pie
Rhoda Hooper, from Favorite Recipes from the Joe English Grange #56, New Boston, N.H., 1996
1 uncooked pie shell
3 or 4 large apples
½ cup (107 g) sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon nutmeg
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
Topping
½ cup (107 g) sugar
½ cup (60 g) flour
½ cup (1 stick) butter
Make an unbaked pie shell. Pare, core, and quarter apples, then halve each piece crossways to make chunks.
Make the filling: Combine ½ cup sugar, nutmeg, and 2 tablespoons flour, and sprinkle the mixture over the apples; toss to coat. Place the mixture in the crust.
Combine the remaining sugar and flour for the topping; cut in the butter. Sprinkle over the top of the apples. Slip the pie into a heavy brown paper bag large enough to cover the pie, then fold the end over. Fasten with paper clips. Bake at 425°F for 1 hour. Split the bag to open.
3 ounces Loon Chocolate Maine Sea Salt Chocolate Bar (about 1½ bars), broken into pieces
1 cup (213 g) sugar
5 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 egg yolks (save egg whites for meringue)
1½ cups (340 g) whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tablespoon butter
1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust
Ingredients for meringue:
2 egg whites
⅛ teaspoon salt
4 Tablespoons sugar
Heat oven to 350°F.
Place pie crust in pie dish and poke holes in pie crust with fork. Bake until brown, about 20 minutes.
While pie crust bakes, in a saucepan, whisk together chocolate, sugar, flour, egg yolks, and milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring until it bubbles and thickens, about 5 to 10 minutes. The mixture should be thick.
Remove the chocolate mixture from heat and add the vanilla and butter.
To make the meringue, beat the egg whites and salt until fluffy. Add sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.
Add chocolate custard to the baked pie crust, then top with meringue. Bake until the meringue peaks are lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Serve warm.
Just chill
Experts offer their pie crust advice
Pies, in the big picture, are not that difficult to make. Lay down some pie dough, scoop in some fillings, top it with another sheet of dough, put it in the oven and walk away for an hour. It’s an operation of elegant simplicity.
The monkey wrench in that optimistic view of pie-making, of course, is the pie crust.
There are dozens of recipes for even a simple pie crust, and passions can run high among home bakers. It can all be a bit intimidating. But at their core, most delicious pie crusts are made with some sort of fat (shortening, butter, lard, coconut oil, etc.), some sort of starch (flour, ground almonds, cookie crumbs, etc.) and a little liquid (usually water) to bring everything together.
Heather Williams of Bittersweet Bake Shoppe. Photo by John Fladd.
According to Lynne Donnelly, the owner of Bittersweet Bake Shoppe in Litchfield, overthinking and overworking are two common ways home bakers mess up their pie crusts. She likes to weigh her ingredients to make certain that her fat-to-flour-to-water ratio is right.
She demonstrated:
“We’re starting with a big bowl,” she said, placing a large, stainless steel bowl on her scale and zeroing its weight out. (This is called “taring.”) “And we’re weighing out our flour. We want five and a half pounds.”
(This recipe is for a small batch of pie dough at a bakery. It will make 18 to 20 rounds of pie dough. See below for the amounts a home baker would use.)
“OK, now,” she said, eying the gauge on her scale, “we’re going to add two pounds and 12 ounces of shortening on top of that.” She said a baker could use butter instead of shortening, but it would have to have the same consistency. “You want the temperature to give it the same softness as shortening,” she said, scooping shortening into the bowl of flour. “But we get a really nice crust with this.” She stressed the importance of using unflavored shortening. “The butter-flavored stuff tastes nasty.”
Next, Donnelly added salt. “Normally, I eyeball the salt,” she said, “but since I have a tablespoon right here, I’m going to do this officially, and add five [tablespoons]. Now, you are going to get in there and start squishing. You’re going to just keep breaking your shortening with the flour with your hands until it looks like cornmeal. You want to mix it all together. Just keep going through it with your hands, until it’s nice and fine and crumbly and everything’s well-blended and there’s no big pieces at all.” She explained this while scooping the crumbs of dough from the sides of the bowl, into the center, as if she were folding egg whites into a batter.
“Now you can pour your water in,” Donnelly said, making a well in the crumbs. “Dump the whole thing right in the middle, and then just bring it all together. Just keep pulling it together; no kneading. You don’t want it to be too gooey. Just pull it together, until the water is absorbed.”
The next step is to chill the dough. Unlike some pie doughs, Bittersweet’s does not have streaks of shortening running through it, but Donnelly said it is still vitally important to keep the dough as cold as possible. “There’s no tricks or gimmicks with this crust — no vinegars, or people with their little magic potions. It comes out the same every time. The thing is keeping it cold.”
After the dough has chilled, the next step is to form it into six-ounce disks.
“A lot of my life has been spent weighing out crusts,” Donnelly said. Each slab of dough gets formed into 3- to 4-inch disks, with care taken not to overwork it.
The last important step, Donnelly said, is to chill the dough again before rolling it out. This will give the tiny flecks of shortening time to firm up, and for the dough itself to relax and finish integrating the water. This is a basic, use-for-everything pie dough recipe. “You could also make crackers with this,” she said, “but you would have to add cheese and butter and things like that.”
Just one pie crust For a smaller number of pie crusts, Donnelly suggested using the following proportions for each.
1¼ cup (136 g) flour ⅓ cup (75 g) shortening or butter ½ teaspoons salt 3½ Tablespoons ice water
Double this for a two-crust pie.
“Extra pie crusts can be frozen, either laid out flat between sheets of waxed paper, or rolled up,” Donnelly said.
Basketball fans don’t have to drive far to find games nearly every weekend through the end of February. Local colleges offer women’s and men’s games to cheer at — often with admission that is either free or in line with movie ticket prices.
Photo by SNHU Athletic Communications/Josh Gibney of Penmen player Royce Williams. Courtesy of Southern New Hampshire University.
Southern New Hampshire University
Eric Coplin, the Director of Athletic Communication at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, spoke to the Hippo about Penmen Basketball at the school.
“So both teams play in the Northeast 10, which is part of NCAA Division II. The A-10 is usually kind of looked at as one of the stronger conferences in Division II. So we play in a really strong league. And I think anyone coming to watch is going to see a really strong brand of basketball,” Coplin said.
“I love this level. … I think it’s a legitimate student-athlete experience. They’re here to be students, but they’re also here to be high-level athletes,” he said.
There is a good possibility of reaching the playoffs. “If we have an NCAA tournament, it’s obviously not as highly publicized as the Division I NCAA tournament, but it’s the same thing. It’s a bunch of teams fighting for a national championship,” Coplin said.
One of the biggest games is against nearby Saint Anselm College.
“We play them twice a year. We play them at home and then play them at their place. That’s definitely our biggest rival in basketball for sure. So [we] definitely draw the biggest crowd, best atmosphere for that game, for sure,” he said.
In the age of Caitlin Clark, both men’s and women’s teams draw a crowd.
“I think our women’s basketball crowds have really improved over the last few years to kind of match the men. In some games I think they even outdraw our men. But I think that has a lot to do with how we’ve been super successful the last three years. The team hadn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 1990 and now they’ve made it three straight seasons. They were in the conference championship game two years ago, so I think a lot of that is just in the increased talent level. I think winning helps that,” Coplin said.
Kids’ teams can get involved too. “We have a lot of cool youth involvement, like Hooksett Youth Basketball League, always happy to work with the youth programs in the greater Manchester area for sure,” he said The Hooksett Youth Basketball League is part of the Hooksett Youth Athletic Association (HYAA).
“Admission is free for all of our regular season games,” he said. Championship rounds are a slightly different story. “Once we get into playoffs, the NEC 10 as a conference charges. And then if we were to host regionals, the NCAA charges.”
All of the home games are at the Stan Spirou Field House on campus. Many of the games are double-headers, with a women’s game followed by the men’s. “We have a concession stand that’s usually open … [with] hot dog, pretzel, drinks, candy, stuff like that,” he said.
“We’re hoping for a good year, another fun time, fun atmosphere with the crowd, getting into it. Like I said, the women have been to three straight NCAA tournaments. The men last year won the conference championship and the NCAA regional tournament. The men went to the Elite Eight last year for the first time since 2015,” Coplin said.
Saint Anselm College
Zach Elliot, Assistant Director of Athletic Communications for the Hawks at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, is looking forward to the school’s upcoming basketball season.
The Saint Anselm Hawks are in what he called “the highly competitive Northeast-10 Conference” within NCAA Division II.
“The men’s side is a historic program coming off a trip to the Conference Semifinals last year,” Elliot said. “They also won the Conference title two years ago and have won 10 NE10 Championships. They are returning an All-Conference Third Team selection from last year in Josh Morissette, an Exeter native who finished in the top 10 in the league in scoring with 17.9 points per game. He also made the 16th most three-pointers last year as just a sophomore.”
The team has a new head coach this year in Chris Santo, replacing Keith Dickson, who retired during the offseason after 39 years in charge, Elliot said. Santo is a former NE10 Player of the Year and served as an Assistant Coach for both Saint Anselm and the University of Vermont (NCAA Division I).
“The women’s side looks to improve this year after two straight first-round playoff exits,” Elliot said. “They return their top scorer from a season ago in Tatum Forbes, who put up 14.7 points per game as a sophomore. She finished in the top 20 in the NE10 in scoring, assists, rebounding and steals.”
Games to especially look forward to, Elliot said, will be the game on Wednesday, Nov. 20, against Saint Michael’s College from Colchester, Vermont, the defending champions for men’s, and the Wednesday, Feb. 19, game against in-city rival Southern New Hampshire University.
“Our basketball teams are always hosting youth programs to come and spend time at our games. The teams get a chance to play on the court at halftime or during an intermission. Our teams stay after the game to sign autographs and take photos as well,” Elliot said. “Our women’s team also volunteers at a local middle school and takes part in numerous activities with local youth.
And at the game, there are snacks. Elliot said the concession stand, located outside the gymnasium, offered items such as popcorn, candy, hot dogs and bottled beverages.
NHTI
Annie Mattarazzo, the new athletic director at NHTI in Concord, cannot wait for the upcoming season of Lynx basketball.
“Our conference is really competitive and our men’s program and women’s program have a history of great success. So I think every game is kind of fun. We play in the YSCC conference, which is within the USCAA,” she said.
The Yankee Small College Conference is within the United States Collegiate Athletic Association, which is composed of junior, community and small colleges, totalling 72 schools. Mattarazzo cited Great Bay Community College as a big match for the school “because we’re both in the state of New Hampshire.”
NHTI teams play inside the Dr. Goldie Crocker Wellness Center on a court named for a former coach, the Paul Hogan Basketball Court.
“It’s really energetic. It’s college basketball here, so it’s up-tempo, it’s fast,” she said. “We play teams from New York to Maine and kind of in the middle, Massachusetts, Connecticut. It’s just really a great atmosphere of up-tempo play locally in central New Hampshire.”
Mattarazzo hopes to preserve the old while ushering in the new. “I’m trying to maintain the traditions that are here and bring some new ideas to the table as well. So yeah, we’re definitely going to work to really continue those game initiatives. Some of my vision is to work with the parks and rec in town in Concord and have, you know, first responders nights with the local fire and EMT and have youth nights and invite teams to play or meet our team. Be able to provide that atmosphere for the Concord area. We do define ourselves as the Concord Community School. In such a prime location, there’s a lot of great connections here to build.”
“Our events are all free unless it gets to the tournament for our conference,” she said. The games be watched online too. “We do stream games, yep. And that would be found on our website under the specific team’s game schedule.”
Mattarazzo is no stranger to the Granite State or basketball. “I’ve been around New Hampshire my entire life. I grew up here. I was a college basketball coach pre my high school administration days on the women’s basketball side, so I’m a big fan of women’s games.”
She’s aware of Caitlin Clark’s impact on the sport. “Clark has been such an instrumental contributor to the growth of college basketball. She plays such a unique style of play and has such a unique mental toughness that it is a beautiful thing to watch. And I think it attracts so many different levels of players in the game of basketball. Her contributions of being a head-down, hard-nosed, competitive athlete really does continue to advance the game of basketball on both sides, men’s and women’s, as she really just plays. She’s not afraid, and I think that’s a great role model for youth in the game of basketball as well.”
The school is a good place to watch the game and to play it too, Mattarazzo said. “Here at NHTI I think we understand, we support the values of being a student-athlete and I think with that and the support in the community, our programs are really going to continue to be competitive and develop.”
Rivier University
Nick Perenick, Director of Athletic Communications, spoke about the upcoming Raiders basketball season at Rivier University in Nashua.
“We’re Division 3 and we’re in the Great Northeast Athletic Conference,” Perenick said. “So we have a couple of other New Hampshire teams in our conference as well as Massachusetts and all over New England really.”
The women’s team is in a good spot this year, he said. “We made it to the playoffs for, I believe, the third straight year last year. And our coach is actually an alum, Deanna Purcell from the class of 2015. She is the leading scorer in program history as well.”
“We currently have a fifth-year senior going after her record,” Perenick said. “She’s sitting just behind her record for all-time scoring. Her name’s Lyric Grumblatt. She was recently named by the New England Basketball Journal to the top 10 watch list for Division III basketball athletes for New England for this upcoming season. Between the coach and our player going after the record, it’s pretty cool.”
The men’s team has bright prospects.
“Two seasons ago we were really down. We finished with two wins and 23 losses. Then last year we had the biggest win turnaround from season to season. Last season we went 15 and 12 overall. We went from two wins to 15 wins. So plus 13 was, I believe, the largest in the country in terms of win differential from year to year,” he said. The Raiders finished seventh last year.
A couple games to especially look out for are on the horizon.
“I think for the men’s side it’s playing a conference opponent named Albertus Magnus College. They’re from Connecticut. They’ve won the conference the last few years or are fed right up at the top — if they’re not winning they’re in second, coming in second place losing the championship. They play at our place on Jan. 25 this year for the men’s side. So Albertus is one of the teams we kind of circle on the calendar as a team to get ready for as the season goes on,” Perenick said.
The women’s team has the same rival along with other teams. “I would say our biggest game in conference this year is actually an away game. I would also say Alberta is one of the top teams that we play at home this year. Most of our bigger games with real rivals are on the road. Those are Emmanuel and St. Joseph’s College of Maine, but I would say that Albertus is probably the toughest team we’ll play at home in conference this year.”
Certain game days have themes. “For the women, on Feb. 8 they’re going to host a game in dedication of National Girls and Women in Sports Day. Last year we invited a bunch of youth basketball teams and a bunch of youth girl athletes to campus for a game to celebrate that. It’s a day, the National Girls and Women in Sports Day, but we can’t celebrate it if we don’t have a game on that day so we honor that day on the weekend and we have a nice event with a bunch of youths from the area.” The men’s team will have a Youth Sports Day on Saturday, Jan. 11, against New England College.
Asked about the Caitlin Clark effect, he agrees she has had an undeniable impact in basketball. “Any time there’s a generational talent in any sport, there’s going to be more eyes on that sport. I think that Caitlin Clark has helped at a lot of different levels. I would say that for our women’s team and for the youth in the area, I think it’s a lot easier for us to have that National Girls and Women in Sports Day event with the headway that she’s made in the realm of women’s sports. But I would say that most of our fans and supporters are students or parents,” he said.
Concessions are available at some games, and a good number of the matches have teams play back to back. “We do a lot of double-headers with the men’s and women’s. In conference, almost every game is a double-header for men’s and women’s basketball.”
A multi-camera setup is used to capture all of the shots. “You can view our website and then under there you can scroll to the schedule pages and then find the video link,” he said. “You can watch all of our archived games for all sports that are broadcast. We have four cameras for the stream along with live commentary for all home games in the gym.”
New England College
Erica Ledy, the Head Women’s Basketball Coach at New England College in Henniker, is excited about the upcoming season for the Division III Pilgrims.
“I think we might be pretty good this year. We have, it looks like, a completely new team, so if you’re a spectator that came last year and is coming this year, you’re probably going to see a lot of new faces,” Ledy said.
“We’re going to play an up-tempo style of game so it’s like a fast-paced game, a lot of shots, pressing, like, pressuring the ball all the way up. So it should be more fun than a slower-paced game,” she said.
The team is in a whole new conference this year, the Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC).
“So we don’t really have a lot of rivals yet, because it’s new. But Colby Sawyer is in our conference and we used to be in a conference with them before and they’re close to us, so I would probably say Colby Sawyer and maybe Plymouth and Keene would be our rivals, maybe Rivier, because they’re all New Hampshire schools,” Ledy said.
The team has worked with Henneker Elementary School over the last few years. “They will come and we’ll put on a mini clinic and the girls will stay and then we have a game where they’ll come when we [are] warming up, they’ll come out and talk to the girls. If other schools wanted to we’d be glad to do it. We like when teams want to be part of it.”
How about the Caitlin Clark effect? “I think a lot more people that didn’t really pay attention to basketball pay attention to it more now. She’s a great player. She is a really good offensive player. Defensively, she’s not the greatest. … but I think a lot more people are watching women’s basketball, girls basketball because of it. I think a lot of people can relate to somebody shooting a three-pointer and making it. It’s fun to watch.”
A smaller venue enhances the immediacy of the sport. “Our gym is very small, holds about 300 people, and usually it’s pretty full. It’s loud, it’s a great atmosphere, it’s really fun. We played a lot of schools where the gym is a lot bigger but it seems like nobody’s there because it’s so big, so it’s pretty neat,” Ledy said. She also noted concessions are a draw. “Our volleyball team runs concession stands usually when we have double-headers, so when we play and the men play after us or the men play first and we play second, there will be concession stands.”
The ability to watch the game from everywhere is definitely beneficial for those far away. “You can click Watch and you can watch it on your computer or livestream it up onto your TV.” Both men’s and women’s games offer the same feature for home games.
Ledy hopes to see you in the stands. “It will be exciting this year and they’re just a really nice group of girls that play hard, so it would be fun to watch. And we’d love for people to come out and watch us.”
Amya Moss of New England College. Photo by Meaghan Marcus.
What is a Division? A Conference?
The NCAA has Division I, Division II and Division III basketball for both men’s and women’s teams. Each Division consists of around 64 teams; Men’s Division I is an exception with 68 teams currently.
A Conference is a selection of schools in a given Division.
“So every game that we play this year will be against a Division III school, but only 13 of those teams are in our Conference,” said Erica Ledy, the Head Women’s Basketball Coach for New England College.
New England College is in Division III’s Great Northeast Athletic Conference.
“We play 25 games and we have 13 Conference games,” Ledy said.
“So 12 of the games, they count toward your record, and if you make the NCAA tournament they will help you if you win. But to make the NCAA tournament you have to win your Conference games.”
Conference games are the main deciding factor to make the tournament. “Our Conference games are more important than the out-of-conference games. We won’t be playing Conference games until January and February,” she said.
The same process occurs throughout the country.
“So what happens is the NCAA all across the nation is made up of different Conferences. Every Conference gets an automatic bid into the NCAA tournament. There are probably, I would say, somewhere close to 50 Conferences in Division III across the United States. So there’ll be 50 teams that automatically make the NCAA tournament. That’s the tournament at the end of the season,” she said. These 50 are the teams that win their Conference.
Every Division has its own tournament layout, but each one follows some sort of bracket structure.
There are other ways to make it into the tournament too.
”There will probably be like 14 at-large bids. The Conference games matter because it’s the NCAA tournament,” she said.
Winning the Conference is the more straightforward path to the glory of the NCAA tournament. —Zachary Lewis
Looking to spend a few hours in some place calm and full of nature, not screens? Here are a few places to take a refreshing walk in the great outdoors.
New Hampshire Audubon’s Massabesic Center trails
Where: 26 Audubon Way in Auburn
More info: nhaudubon.org/lands/sanctuaries/massabesic-wildlife-sanctuary
Kimberly Whiteman, Massabesic Center Director for New Hampshire Audubon, spoke to the Hippo about the trails at Lake Massabesic as well as other Audubon locations and a couple of other areas around Manchester.
“I am primarily based here in Auburn,” Whiteman said. “I also work out in Concord occasionally with the management team and staff. We’re a big family here at New Hampshire Audubon.”
What are the Massabesic trails like? “We have a network of trails that connect to Manchester Waterworks trails. So on our peninsula there are about 7 miles of walking trails depending on which route you take. New Hampshire Audubon really only stewards directly about a mile of those trails primarily through our field. Our fields and our sanctuary are not dog-friendly and we don’t permit bicycles or motorized vehicles, to help protect the integrity of the wildlife sanctuary, but Manchester Water Works trails do allow bicycles, horses and leash dogs and we let folks use our parking lot to access those trails as long as they hit them from the main road and not through our sanctuary.”
The 49-acre sanctuary was acquired in 1993 and features trail access to Lake Massabesic, as well as a variety of upland habitats including mixed forests and open fields, according to the organization. The fields are managed for grassland nesting birds, while nest boxes are actively managed for tree swallows and eastern bluebirds
It is a common practice to name trails after colors.“We currently have two trails that we really have named, the Yellow Trail and the Red Trail, which you can connect to from the field trails,” she said.
The Massabesic Center is creating a new trail with wheelchair accessibility that should be finished by May 2025. “That’s going to be great because it’s going to provide wheelchair access and stroller access through the field,” Whiteman said. “We’re calling it ‘all persons’ because things that are accessible for folks in a wheelchair are also accessible for folks with strollers or [those who] just need an easy, flat surface for whatever reason. It’s so important to have access to nature.”
There are interesting sights around Massabesic.
“The Red Trail goes through our field here to the lake to a point called Blueberry Point. And it gives you great views over the water,” she said. “You’ll pass an old osprey blind on the way, which is a really cool building that has fun facts about ospreys. It used to overlook an osprey nest that was blown down in a storm several years ago, but it still gives you great views of wildlife on the water.” The whole loop is a manageable size at “about a mile and a half round trip,” according to Whiteman.
“The Yellow Trail goes out to Battery Point, which culminates in a view of the lake, of course, but also there’s an old historical structure … there’s old ruins out there. We have found a few artifacts related to farming. An old horse bit, stuff like that. There’s an eagle nest on Lake Massabesic, so we’ll see them flying over periodically. We have had bobcat sightings here over the past few months,” she said.
Lots of animals, such as otters, are at Massabesic. “We had babies in our pond about two years ago and we had a family of weasels that were living around this building vicinity last summer that our camp kids got to see. So that was really cool,” she said.
Birds are plentiful at the Audubon among the mammals. “We do see a Baltimore oriole nest in this elm tree almost every year. This year there was a really cool tree that had obvious signs of porcupine. Porcupines will eat wood just like beavers do. When you’re hiking the trails and you keep your eyes open you start noticing those little hints of wildlife activity which are really cool to see,” Whiteman said.
It’s a spot for hawk lovers too. “There is a pair of red-shouldered hawks that nest here every year and they tend to stick around in the winter, which is unusual. So we’ll get folks that see the e-bird records and notice there’s red-shouldered hawk sightings and they’ll come in and question us about it because they don’t believe it. I wouldn’t classify it as a rarity, but it’s not common,” she said. Visitors can catch them if they take the Red Trail.
All Persons Trail Base Layer at Massabesic in October 2024. Photo by Lew Shelley.
McLane Center
Where: 84 Silk Farm Road, Concord, 224-9909
More info: nhaudubon.org/lands/sanctuaries/silk-farm-wildlife-sanctuary
The Audubon at the McLane Center has trails at its Silk Farm Wildlife Sanctuary.
“I want to say like three loops, including Wendy’s Loop, their all-persons trail, which was completed about a year ago. They’ve got a good network too, and their trails also connect to trails that aren’t owned by New Hampshire Audubon. You can probably hit up 6 or 7 miles of trails out there as well,” Whiteman said.
In addition to Wendy’s Loop there are the Great Turkey Pond Loop and Field Loop as well as Old Orchard Trail and West End Farm Trail, which is more than 7 miles long. “These trails follow the same kind of stipulation of only foot traffic,” Whiteman said.
“Their all-persons trail was completed a year ago, so they have a mile-long loop that is completely wheelchair-accessible and is also great because it takes you through so many different habitats,” Whiteman said.
One trail of particular interest is the Great Turkey Pond Loop. “That takes you out to the lake [and] is beautiful. So you start in the pollinator meadow and there’s just a smorgasbord of bees and butterflies and meadow birds and great plants out there. You can see the milkweed and sunflowers and then you’ll start going into the understory where you get a mix of forest birds like warblers and not a birder. I know we’ve had wood thrushes out there,” she said.
The extraordinary wildlife sightings continue. “Then you’ll go under an American Chestnut Reforestation Area, which is really neat to see. And then if you hang a right and go off the All Persons Trail, that’ll take you down to Turkey Pond, where you can see wildlife like beavers. We get eagle sightings there,” Whiteman said.
Charismatic megafauna drop by too. “McLane has had a bobcat sighting almost daily for the past week and we actually had a moose, a young bull moose, go through McLane Center about a month ago,” she said.
Ponemah Bog
Where: Rhodora Drive, Amherst
More info: nhaudubon.org/lands/sanctuaries/ponemah-bog
According to NH Audubon, the name “Ponemah” is derived from the Ojibwe language and refers to the “land of the hereafter.” The 75-acre Ponemah Bog Wildlife Sanctuary came under the protection of New Hampshire Audubon in 1979 through Dr. and Mrs. Homer McMurray and local friends of the Sanctuary.
Jack Gleason Memorial Viewing Platform at Ponemah Bog. Photo courtesy of NH Audubon Archives.
The Ponemah Bog Wildlife Sanctuary features a 3-acre pond surrounded by a floating sphagnum moss mat and encircled by upland oak-pine woods, according to The Nature Conservancy.
“It is a prime example of a bog,” Whiteman said. “Your typical New Hampshire bog. So the boardwalk is not wheelchair-friendly but it is flat. It’s just two boards that are next to each other across the bog mat. But they’ve got wonderful examples of carnivorous sundews, and we do have the same stipulation there that we have at all of our sanctuaries. We ask folks to just use their eyes and leave no trace … when they’re visiting and not disturb wildlife, which is also why we don’t permit dogs.”
Evidence of critters is easily found. “You can probably see, you know, fox scat on that boardwalk, especially in the wintertime when the tracks are really visible, the scat’s visible, you’ll get raccoons and foxes up on the boardwalk at Ponemah,” she said.
Nature is never closed.
“The McLane and Massabesic are open year-round. Our buildings have hours Wednesday through Saturday from 11 to five.The trails of all of our sanctuaries are open every single day of the year from sunrise to sunset. We’re all free to visit,” Whitemand said. “We have another center in Hebron, the Newfound Center, which is seasonal from about Memorial Day to Labor Day.”
Manchester Cedar Swamp
Where: Hackett Hill section of Manchester, on the west side of the Merrimack River; the public parking lot is on Countryside Boulevard.
More info: nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/manchester-cedar-swamp-preserve
The Manchester Cedar Swamp Preserve is 640 acres and is the largest conservation area in the city, according to The Nature Conservancy.
There are 1.8 miles of trails. That includes the universally accessible Cedar Swamp All Persons Trail. Visitors can encounter shady hemlock groves, giant rhododendron patches and “the globally rare Atlantic white cedar swamps that are the preserve’s namesake,” with some trees that are more than 450 years old.
“[The Nature Conservancy] installed that trail,” Whiteman said. “We have taken field trips out there with our staff because it’s a beautiful trail. It was done with a big budget and as much as we can learn from that trail and implement those ideas into our trail, we’re all meeting the same goal with providing access to nature.”
The trail contains tidbits of historical information along the way. “So they’ve got some really great signage, interpretive signage about the history of the land and how it relates to indigenous features and the wildlife. Their trail’s a lot longer than ours are. They’ve got great bridges and benches.”
Other little but practical touches make the Manchester Cedar Swamp Preserve a nifty adventure. “One of the things I really love about the Nature Conservancy’s trail at Cedar Swamp is that they have a boot scrubber as you’re entering their trail and some signage about protecting the property from invasive plant species, seeds that can travel in on your shoes. They encourage people to scrub their shoes before they hit the trails, which is really neat.”
Livingston Park
Where: 244 Hooksett Road, Manchester
More info: manchesternh.gov/Departments/Parks-and-Recreation/Parks-Facilities/Parks/Livingston-Park
Livingston Park comprises 131 acres in Manchester’s North End and is a great option for those with furry friends or all-person access. “That’s something that I like to tell people,” Whiteman said. “When they’re looking for all-persons access in the area, and they have dogs.”
The park includes a playground and athletic fields, as well as Dorrs Pond, which is where the walking trail is. The trail loops around Dorrs Pond and offers a small sampling of wildlife.
“The unpaved walking and running trail loops around Dorrs Pond [are] approximately 10 feet wide and 0.9 miles long. The trail includes elevated boardwalks through wetlands and access to fishing and boating,” according to the City website.
“It’s really busy with people there. My observations have primarily been like waterfowl and small rodents like squirrels, chipmunks, things like that that are really well-adapted to people,” Whiteman said.
Whiteman hopes Granite Staters go to as many trails as possible. “If somebody hasn’t come out to hike them, come on out and hike all of those trails, you know, not just New Hampshire Audubon’s, but it’s good to get a feel of different wildlife in your community. What you’re going to see at Livingston is going to be different from what you’re going to see here [at Massabesic] and what you’re going to see in Concord.”
“It’s crazy just how much wildlife you can see in the heart of Manchester. You don’t expect to think that there’s otters or beavers right in your backyard,” she said.
Along the Derry Rail Trail. Photo by Zachary Lewis.
Beaver Brook Association
Where: 117 Ridge Road, Hollis
More info: 465-7787, beaverbrook.org
Brandon Rackliffe has been the Natural Resource Manager at Beaver Brook for about 11 years.
“We’re a nonprofit and privately run,” Rackliffe said. “It’s just all open for the general public to come and hike. We do have classes here as well, so you can join and take part in classes as well as summer camp and home-school programs”
He estimates the trail mileage there at “roughly, we’ve always said about 35 miles.”
Rackliffe oversees trail maintenance at Beaver Brook. “Everything is well-defined and easily accessible,” he noted. “Nothing is too bad that you have to be an expert to hike it.”
You can pick your starting point. “We have seven or eight parking lots that you can park at, different trailheads. I highly recommend picking up a map before you come or before you start a hike and definitely planning ahead. That way you don’t take the wrong turn or anything like that. Everything is well-marked.”
Depending on the trail, visitors could bring a bike or even their horse.
“We do have hiking-only trails as well as multi-use trails, which entail biking and horses as well, but we don’t allow anything motorized, including e-bikes,” Rackliffe said. “Every trail has a name. They’re marked in either yellow triangles or blue rectangles that indicate either multi-use or hiking only, and everything also has trail plaques.”
With all the trail options, plenty of maintenance work is called for. “We have a wonderful group of volunteers that take over and take ownership of certain trails to maintain and monitor. And those volunteers are the heart and soul of Beaver Brook. They really put in their time and effort to help maintain some of the trails to an extent,” he said.
“Quite a few of our trails are popular, our parking lots pretty much always have somebody in them any time of day. … our main campus, where our office is, the Cow Lane is probably one of the premier trails that we have here.” Portions of Cow Lane, Wildflower Trail and Lower Meadow Trail allow for wheelchair access.
Visitors are offered a glimpse into the state’s past. “A lot of our trails are old wood roads, you know, historical wood roads back in the day when Hollis was a much smaller town. So you can see evidence of old cellar holes and things like that, old bridge crossings or anything of that nature.”
Wildlife is varied here, Rackliffe said, “anything from deer to bear to moose, along with the small mammals and birds and things like that. We have all kinds of frogs, blue herons. I’ve seen all kinds of ducks. I’ve seen rare ducks in some of our ponds, plenty of bobcat. I’ve seen those plenty of times kicking around.”
According to Rackliffe, every trail offers something of interest, “which would be why we made the trail there in the first place. There’s a Jeff Smith trail that runs nine miles from Pepperell all the way up to Beaverbrook. We own the last third or half of the trail. And that runs through many other organizations. Everything is protected under easement.”
Gardens are also open at Beaver Brook. The Maple Hill Gardens are at the main campus, and tours and presentations are available with a reservation. These are 13 themed gardens, a natural play area, a demonstration compost court, picnic areas and a wildflower trail, according to the organization.
Mine Falls Park trail. Photo by Zachary Lewis.
Mine Falls Park
Where: There are multiple parking lots at and near the park, with one entry at Whipple Street
More info: nashuanh.gov/491/Mine-Falls-Park 589-3370
According to the City of Nashua, the park’s name came from an island underneath the waterfalls that allegedly contained a lead mine in the 18th century.
The park trails were added to the New Hampshire Heritage Trail system, which is 130 miles and follows the Merrimack River from Massachusetts to Canada.
There are six color-coded trails that vary in length around the park. The longest is the Blue Trail at 2.94 miles and the shortest is the Orange, which comes in at 0.38 miles. The Green is 1.96 miles long and the Red Trail is 1.40 miles. The Purple and Yellow Trails are both under a mile.
Patty Bernard and her husband Alan are frequent visitors to the trails at Mine Falls Park. “We like coming here because they have a lot of paved trails. It’s great because he has his motor scooter now,” she said. “So it gets him out and about. This is nice scenery. You’ve got the river, and then sometimes we go to the dam, the picnic table’s there, and we’ll pack a lunch, sit by and watch people kayak, canoe, boating, just to change the scenery.”
Wildlife is a part of that scenery. “We see turtles, beavers, nothing major now,” she said.
The paths take you straight through Nashua. “They put the first high school up and that’s what started everything and made it all connected. One in North Nashua, so you can actually walk from one to the other if you had to,” Alan said. “It’s a good distance.”
Multiple entrances add ease of access as well. “There’s different entrances to the park, which is nice. You can get access from downtown Nashua; over by the high school, Nashua South; over by Hannaford — that’s where we pulled in, over by Hannaford,” Patty said.
Mine Falls Park has many options for getting outside. “Great for dog walkers.We used to bike the trails, which was pretty cool,” she said.
“It’s a fun place to go. I mean, we’re still doing it,” Alan said.
“Every chance we get,” Patty added.
Rail Trail in Derry
Where: Hood Park, 4 Rollins St., Derry
The Rail Trail criss-crosses all across New Hampshire, and Derry contains a 3.6-mile paved chunk of it that crosses through trees and wetlands, according to Trail Link at traillink.com.
The trail quickly enters into a wooded area and eventually crosses Beaver Brook over a stone arch bridge. The middle of the bridge is known as Lover’s Leap, although the origin for that name is unknown.
The paved section of trail ends in Hood Park and its pond contains multiple species of fish and is stocked annually with brook trout and rainbow trout. The trail along the west side of Hood Pond continues on a dirt path for another 0.3 mile until the path ends.
The Derry Rail Trail connects to the Windham Rail Trail on its south side and in the future will connect with the Londonderry Rail Trail, according to the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission.
Hikers can park at Hood Park or at the Merchants Row lot in Derry, which has two-hour free parking and is more accessible for those using mobility aids or strollers.
Douglas Lowney, a resident of Methuen, is a big fan of the Derry Rail Trail. “Look at the beauty,” he said in reference to the lake and woodland covered path around him. “It’s like this the whole time. It doesn’t matter what time of year you’re here. It’s lovely. … I try to come three or four days a week. It’s like heaven.”
Lowney rides what he calls “a stand-up bike. I ride this about 20 miles I guess. It’s paved all the way. It goes all the way to Salem. And then it goes all the way down [Route] 28 past Walmart.”
Wildlife abounds as well. “See the beaver down there?” he asked.
The trail is perfect for those looking for the tranquility as well as the awesomeness of nature. “There’s all sorts of beautiful things here. In the fall, this is spectacular. It’s like it’s on fire,” Lowney said. The leaves “come tumbling down into the waters like it’s snowing. It’s beautiful. And the folks that take care of this trail do a good job,” he said.
No matter how Lowney is feeling, the Derry Rail Trail is restorative for him. “Even when I don’t feel good, I’m actually good when I come here. It’s very therapeutic.”
White Park
Where: 1 White St., Concord
More info: concordnh.gov/Facilities/Facility/Details/White-Park-21
According to the the City of Concord, White Park came to life in 1884 when the land it sits on was conveyed to the city by Armenia White for her late husband Nathaniel, who was a founder of The American Express Co., and the park itself was designed by architect Charles Elliott in 1888.
The Park extends from Eastman Baseball Field to the Monkey Around Playground, with various walking paths and a big loop around White Park Pond, which is filled with lots of ducks, koi fish, and frogs. The Pond becomes an outdoor skating rink during the winter months.
The Monkey Around Playground is the largest in Concord. It’s a giant wooden castle structure that is a lot of fun for little Granite Staters.
A couple of Franklin Pierce School of Law employees, Rachael Lefurge and Alexa Bobinski, were enjoying the park on a gray November weekday.
“I really enjoy walking around. It’s a nice break from my work day. There’s always a lot of people walking around. It’s really nice to work with the pond on a beautiful day,” Lefurge said.
“Yeah, I feel like it’s very beautiful no matter what season it is. It’s always very pretty. There’s always a lot of people here and wildlife,” Bobinski added.
“I usually see ducks,” Lefurge said. Even when the ducks eventually leave the Pond, the trails will still be filled with dogs and squirrels.
“It’s nice to get up and walk around a little bit and have some nice scenery just in the middle of Concord,” Bobinksi said.
