Vermont

Christmas Lights Vermont: 6 displays to make some holiday memories at in 2024

Published

2 years ago

November 21, 2024

Christmas Lights Vermont: 6 displays to make some holiday memories at in 2024

Holiday lights, decorations at American Christmas in Mount Vernon NY

American Christmas in Mount Vernon has opened its Holiday Lane Christmas lights display to the public through December 29, 2024.

The weather is getting colder and the days are getting shorter, but the dark days of winter bring with them a beloved holiday tradition sure to brighten up anyone’s day – Christmas lights.

And no where does Christmas like Vermont, just ask the Hallmark Channel.

To experience the dazzling lights of the holiday season, you don’t have to go far. Whether you want to stroll through a park, watch a parade or take in the lights from your car, Vermont is sure to have the holiday light display for you.

Here are six in-state Christmas light displays to check out this holiday season.

Winter Lights at Shelburne Museum

On nights during the holiday season, Shelburne Museum turns into a winter wonderland full of colorful light displays. Each building and garden of the museum’s campus is uniquely decorated, from cascading twinkling lights at Beach Woods to the 220-foot illuminated steamboat “Ticonderoga.”

New this year, Shelburne will feature a circus display filled with whimsical figures under an illuminated Big Top tent. The museum will also have two gift shops and a café with hot chocolate open until 8 p.m. each night of the light display.

Online tickets cost $15 for adults, $10 for children ages 3-17 or $30 for VIP. Shelburne recommends purchasing online, as tickets at the door are more expensive and not guaranteed. For those who want to experience the dazzling lights from their car, drive around nights are available on select days for $65 per car.

When: Winter Lights is open on select days from Nov. 21, 2024 through Jan. 1, 2025. The event starts at 4:30 p.m., and the last admission is at 7 p.m. Sensory-friendly nights will be Dec. 9 and Dec. 16, and drive through nights are Dec. 3-4, Dec. 10-11, Dec. 17-18 and Jan. 2-5.

Where: Shelburne Museum, 6000 Shelburne Road, Shelburne, VT

A Forest of Lights

Nature lovers can experience the beautiful Vermont outdoors lit up for the holiday season at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS) Nature Center in Quechee. A Forest of Lights, the nature center’s holiday light special, is an outdoor walkthrough experience with thousands of lights in exciting displays, including the Snow Shower Tower, Snow Globe, Whimsical Woodland and Mandala Trees.

When you finish walking through the illuminated forest, hot chocolate and light snacks are available for purchase to enjoy by the campfire.

Tickets cost $13 for adults or $8 for children over three.

When: This nature-filled light display is open from 4:30 to 7 p.m. on weekends and other select days from Nov. 22, 2024 through Jan. 4, 2025.

Where: VINS Nature Center, 149 Natures Way, Quechee, VT

Christmas Lights at the Joseph Smith Birthplace

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints celebrates Christmas with an outdoor light display at the birthplace of the church’s founder, Joseph Smith. Over 200,000 colorful lights decorate the grounds of the South Royalton monument.

Visitors can walk or drive along the decorated path for free.

When: After an official lighting on Nov. 29, this light show will be open daily through Jan. 1, 2025. Hours are 4 to 9 p.m.

Where: Joseph Smith Birthplace, 357 Lds Lane, S. Royalton, VT

Winter Lights in the Park

This free, family-friendly light display allows guests to walk through lit trees and tunnels in Maple Street Park while holiday music floats through the air. Winter Lights in the Park also doubles as a scavenger hunt for hidden ornaments throughout the decorated trees.

When: Maple Street Park’s lights will be on from 5 to 8 p.m. daily from Nov. 28, 2024 through Jan. 1, 2025.

Where: Maple Street Park, 75 Maple St., Essex Junction, VT

Holiday Lighted Tractor Parade

Manchester’s holiday tractor parade is back for its 14th year, offering a unique mobile light show. As part of the town’s holiday celebration Manchester Merriment, the parade brings tractors and floats decked out in lights and holiday decorations to the heart of downtown Manchester.

Attendance to the town’s holiday parade is free.

When: This year’s tractor parade is Saturday, Dec. 7 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Where: The parade takes place in downtown Manchester on Main and Bonnet St.

Spruce Peak Lights Festival

Held for one night only at The Village at Spruce Peak, the Spruce Peak Lights Festival illuminates the ski village and surrounding evergreen trees with thousands of holiday lights.

Other attractions at this event include ice dancing performances, photos with Santa and a firework show.

When: Spruce Peak’s 2024 lights festival will take place on Saturday, Dec. 21 from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m. The annual lighting will be at 7 p.m.

Where: Spruce Peak Village, 559 Spruce Peak Road, Stowe, VT

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Vermont

Norman Rockwell finally gets his day in new Shelburne Museum exhibit

Published

8 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Press Room

Norman Rockwell finally gets his day in new Shelburne Museum exhibit

SHELBURNE — Norman Rockwell lived for a time in suburban New York City and died and was buried in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. But for 14 years in between, the artist spent perhaps the most prolific period of his career in Vermont creating his best-known works.

That’s how Shelburne Museum curator Carolyn Bauer sees it — and how the museum’s latest exhibition treats the artist.

“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont,” which opens June 20 and runs through Oct. 25, displays 40 of the 175 covers Rockwell famously created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine during his time in Vermont between 1939 and 1953.

Also on display are prints of “The Four Freedoms,” maybe his most famed works of all, which represent American ideals spelled out by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Paintings in the exhibition include “The Young Lady with the Shiner” and “The Tattoo Artist,” both whimsical, recognizable pieces used as covers for The Saturday Evening Post.

“It’s very accessible work and approachable,” Bauer said.

The display features the three paintings that inspired the exhibition, given to the Shelburne Museum by Rock of Ages, the Barre granite quarry and monument maker. Those Rockwell paintings filled a significant gap in the museum’s art collection, which includes works by Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Grandma Moses and Andrew Wyeth but, until recently, none by Rockwell, perhaps the best-known artist to have lived here.

“It feels like a homecoming in many regards,” Bauer said.

Moving to southern VT, finding ‘the every American’

The exhibition frames Rockwell’s time in Vermont around the tenor of the times in America. As the Great Depression was ending, World War II was looming and the nation was growing more urban and industrialized, much of the public was yearning for greater simplicity, Bauer said.

Rockwell was among them, leaving New Rochelle north of New York City for the quietude of Arlington in southern Vermont.

He was not alone. Contemporary artists including Mead Schaeffer, John Atherton and Gene Pelham would settle in Arlington too, creating what Bauer termed “the golden illustrator days” in Vermont.

Rockwell’s art, as the 152-page hardcover catalogue accompanying the exhibition notes, shows “how Vermont itself came to embody American ideals in the national imagination.”

Rockwell and his fellow Arlington artists used each other as models in their creations. “They really would work collaboratively,” Bauer said.

Pelham’s daughter, Melinda, is shown in the exhibition in two works: “The Babysitter,” a painting of a girl holding a crying baby that’s on loan from The Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont and an admission submission Rockwell sent to Kellogg’s of a girl clutching a cereal-laden spoon to her mouth.

Doctors, mail deliverers and shopkeepers from Arlington populated his work. Bauer said Rockwell usually gave models $5 and a can of Coca-Cola.

“He was recycling and using just about everybody in town,” Bauer said. That included himself: Rockwell added his own visage to the multiple faces in “The Gossip,” which shows him lashing out at a woman who’s started the rumor-mongering.

Bauer said Rockwell wanted to cultivate a sense of place by using Vermonters known for their austere self-reliance at the forefront of his work. He also found “the every American” ideal in town, Bauer said, though his art reflected a pronounced lack of diversity.

In later work, Rockwell would confront race and segregation as the Civil Rights Movement swept the U.S.

“He was progressive,” Bauer said.

Inspired by paintings donated by Rock of Ages

“Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont” was inspired by the 2025 museum acquisition of a trio of Rockwell works that once hung in the Barre offices of Rock of Ages. The granite company contacted the museum asking if it could donate the paintings, Bauer said, prompting staffers to wonder momentarily, “Is this real?”

Rockwell created advertisements for Rock of Ages and gave the paintings upon which the ads were based to the company. “Kneeling Girl” from 1955, making its debut at the Shelburne Museum, takes place in front of a gravestone engraved with the name Newton.

Rock of Ages donated two versions of 1963 work “The Craftsman,” a muted draft and a more luminous final version that were first displayed at the museum last year. They depict Rock of Ages stonecutter George Seivwright working in the shadow of a memorial bearing the name “Norwell,” a portmanteau of Rockwell’s first and last names.

Bauer called the paintings “incredible works of art that were circulated widely” in ads, brochures and pamphlets touting Rock of Ages and its world-famous Vermont granite. Though Rockwell had left Vermont for Massachusetts by the time he created those paintings, they do what Rockwell had done when he lived in Arlington — show the nation and the world what Vermont and Vermonters are capable of.

“We are just eager for our visitors to see these paintings,” Bauer said.

If you go

WHAT: “Norman Rockwell: At Home in Vermont”

WHEN: June 20 through Oct. 25

WHERE: Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education, Shelburne Museum

INFORMATION: $8-$25 museum admission; free under age 5 and for active military and Shelburne Museum members. shelburnemuseum.org

Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@burlingtonfreepress.com.

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Vermont

Possible tornado causes damage in small Vermont town during Thursday’s intense storms – The Boston Globe

Published

18 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

Possible tornado causes damage in small Vermont town during Thursday’s intense storms – The Boston Globe

The National Weather Service is investigating whether a small tornado touched down in Woodstock in eastern Vermont on Thursday afternoon as intense storms swept through the area, uprooting and snapping trees, and causing structural damage.

A damage survey team is expected to assess the damage on Friday morning to confirm whether any tornadoes touched down during the severe thunderstorms, the Weather Service in Burlington, Vt., said.

The suspected tornado occurred some time between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., according to the NWS. A tight vortex, a marker for rotation, was spotted on radar, although there was no debris signature detected on radar. No tornado warnings were issued at the time.

If a tornado is confirmed to have touched down, the survey team will also determine the size, path, and intensity of the twister.

Some of the damage left behind by what is believed to have been a tornado that touched down Thursday.Chris Markos

The last tornado to touch down in Vermont was just a couple of months ago. On April 16, 2026, an EF1 touched down in Williamstown, Vt., according to the NWS. An EF1 tornado is the second-lowest rating for twisters, according to the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which ranks them based on intensity.

Several supercells had tracked across northern New York into southern and central Vermont, producing large hail and damaging winds, and eventually spawning the tornado, which the Weather Service said was about a half-mile long and 200 yards wide at its peak. The damage survey team also found ”extensive wind damage between Ainsworth State Park and Jackson Center with estimated winds between 70 and 80 mph,“ which was caused by an accompanying microburst, the NWS said.

Large trees are seen uprooted near Staples Pond in Williamstown, Vt., in April.NWS

More than an hour after the Vermont storm, two tornado warnings were issued for southern Worcester County after a pair of tight vortexes were spotted on radar, indicating a possible tornado.

No structural or other damages were found, but storm spotters have submitted reports of a funnel cloud near the Spencer-Leicester town line.

Ken Mahan can be reached at ken.mahan@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @kenmahantheweatherman. Marianne Mizera can be reached at marianne.mizera@globe.com. Follow her @MareMizera.

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Vermont

Vermont law enforcement officers petition for highway dedication in honor of David Chris Maland

Published

1 day ago

June 18, 2026

Press Room

Vermont law enforcement officers petition for highway dedication in honor of David Chris Maland

It’s been nearly a year and a half since border agent David ‘Chris’ Maland was shot and killed during a traffic stop near the interstate in Coventry, Vermont. Now, a group of law enforcement officers are petitioning to dedicate a section of I-91 to him.

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