Our December calendar continues to fill with free and fun holiday specials, craft fairs, winter festivals, and your pick of wintertime events. The Mass Horticultural Society's Festival of Trees continues through Saturday, and the Concord Museum is decked out for the holidays with its annual Family Trees exhibit. The first night of Chanukah is this Saturday, so get in the spirit with the lighting of the Menorah on the Boston Common, a Family Chanukah Celebration at the Boston Synagogue or the Chanukah Cantata at the Central Reform Temple of Boston.

Those are just a few of the great things going on this weekend. Read on for all of our picks. You can find additional options in our Event Calendar and our Winter Holiday Fun Guide.

If you’re still looking for good camp options for December Vacation Week or need some structure for your little one during the time off from preschool, we’ve rounded up more December vacation week camps to consider. And for those of you with winter birthdays in the family, read some ways we’ve overcome the challenges of a winter birthday party.

Our first ever Biggest Holiday Giveaway offers up the hottest gifts of the season, with a different prize each day. Each prize is available for 24 hours only, so be sure to check in every day.

Enjoy!

Yay!  Saturday is the first night of Hanukkah! That means lots of dreidel spinning, menorah lighting, and latkes!  (Eight crazy nights of it, to be exact).  And there’s no better place to get your Maccabee on than Los Angeles, the city with the 4^th largest Jewish population… in the world! (somebody say Challah!) Whether you like your Menorah by the sea, in the Valley, or in the heart of downtown, or even put together with LEGOs, our handy dandy Hanukkah guide can help you get your candles lit.

While 8 nights of presents is simply awesome when you’re a kid, it can be a bit of a challenge when you’re the one doing the providing. Luckily, Mommy Poppins is here to help with that, too. Our first ever Biggest Holiday Giveaway offers up the hottest gifts of the season, with a different prize each day. Each prize is available for 24 hours only, so be sure to check in every day!

Keep reading for some of our favorite picks for this weekend...

This past weekend my family headed out for our annual tradition of cutting down our Christmas Tree.  We've been cutting down our own tree for the past four years.  I must confess that I was intimidated by the process the first time we set out to try it.  When I pictured heading out with two young children and a saw to cut down a nine foot tree, I imagined disaster.  But it has proved to be one of my favorite family events and is not quite as challenging as I had imagined.  If you're considering cutting down your own tree this year we've got the scoop on some great farms in Litchfield County,  Hartford County and Fairfield County. For all things Holiday, including light shows, events, entertainment and so much more, make sure to check out our CT Holiday Fun Guide.

Don't miss our Biggest Holiday Giveaway! Every day for the next two weeks, we're giving away a different great prize. Today's prize is a $150 to spend on Customized Holiday Cards at Minted, where you can design and order cool, fun holiday cards. Click here to visit our Biggest Holiday Giveaway page and enter to win. And check back each day for more prizes. Happy Holidays!

I don't know about you, but I can remember getting all gussied up as a kid for my great aunt to take us to see the Nutcracker.  It's just one of many memories that combine to define the Christmas season for me.  Understandably, not all kids are into dancing sugarplums, but that doesn't mean there isn't a special night at the theater in store for them, too.  This year, central Connecticut has everything from a Handel's Messiah Sing-Along to a kooky Christmas beauty pageant -- ample material to make new family memories!
 

The holidays bring so many kinds of seasonal fun for families to enjoy and form memories - parades, fireworks, ice skating, family drives to see Christmas lights - and a winter break to fit them all in. There's just one little thing about that winter break: there's no school. None at all. And as much as we love having our kids with us all the time, that doesn't mean we want our kids with us all the time! If winter break poses logistical problems - or even just sanity problems - for your family, time to find a camp. How about one of the 10 camps below? Or check some of the other camps listed in our camp guide to see if your favorite summer camp has a winter vacation plan!

The holiday season is in full swing in NYC and many of our favorite annual seasonal celebrations take place this weekend. See Santa get rescued by some of New York's Bravest at the New York City Fire Museum. Hear a no-cost concert of Christmas carols tooted out at Tuba Christmas. And celebrate Hanukkah with giant menorah lightings in Central and Prospect Parks, and at The Jewish Museum with candles, candy and songs by Yosi and the Superdads.

Other fun on tap this weekend includes a concert by Dan Zanes and Friends, holiday storytime with Mommy Poppins founder Anna Fader at the Children's Museum of Manhattan and the Guggenheim's annual production of Peter and the Wolf.

Those are just a few of the great things going on this weekend. Read on for all of our picks. You can find additional options in our Event Calendar and our Holiday Fun Guide.

The holiday countdown is on so you’re bound to see twinkling lights, holly and the Big Red Man everywhere you go. Time to check out the Santa Claus Train Ride, Santa Fly-In Celebration or Hudson Ballet’s Nutcracker! And the first night of Hanukkah is this Saturday, so get in the spirit with Hooray for Hanukkah crafts at the Garden State Museum or the Hanukkah Winter Wonderland at Imagine That! Read on for our top picks and remember you can find a listing of all NJ activities in our Event Calendar.

Our NYC Shopping Local Gift Guide is chock-full of great places to find cool kids' items, from seasonal pop-up shops to holiday markets to year-round family favorites. But in addition to hitting your usual go-to shops, why not try something new?

We've found seven new toy stores that opened in Manhattan and Brooklyn over the past year, many specializing in handcrafted, eco-friendly playthings that you won't find in the big chains. Bonus: Some of these shops also offer classes, sing-alongs and special events for kids, so you may find yourself hitting these spots long after the holidays are over.