New Orleans: A Crescent City Christmas
Thank goodness, a place where the
beignet has banished the fruit cake

Here’s a dilemma every Christmas celebrant should face: You decide to travel somewhere else to pass the holiday and your choices have come down to two:

1. Find a “traditional” location where heavy snows insure your fair share of sleigh rides, colorful ice palaces, running noses and a compulsion to guzzle mulled wine more to stay warm than to party.

2. Eschew tradition and look for a place where it doesn’t snow, where drinking has nothing to do with being cold, where the days are longer in winter because it’s so far south, and where the food is always so special it never needs a holiday to give it a reason to exist.

If No. 2 sounds good, you are contemplating a visit to New Orleans, where, in the month of December, the French Quarter is given over to a four-week celebration of Christmas.

The range of festivities at “Christmas New Orleans Style” is almost encyclopedic: Free nightly concerts at St. Louis Cathedral presented by local musicians; cruising the Mississippi on a paddlewheel steamer singing Christmas carols; watching the blazing lights of bonfires along the levees; carriage rides under New Orleans’ stately moss-draped oaks; running into Papa Noel and Mary Christmas as they roam the French Quarter; tours of antebellum homes; children’s crafts workshops and even teas; free cooking demonstrations by the city’s best chefs.

The town gets behind the festival by offering prix fixe dinners that take guests through a traditional holiday Reveillon dinner, and hotels, eager to pump up winter trade, offer attractive “Papa Noel” rates well below rack.

To learn more about Christmas New Orleans Style visit New Orleans' official tourism site, www.NewOrleansOnline.com, where you can download or order a free guide detailing Christmas New Orleans Style events, menus and hotel rates. Hotel reservations, including special citywide rates, can also be booked via the web site.

This web site will give you specific information about the upcoming festival.