Sitting a snappy 3,500 miles due South of the North Pole, snuggled cosily between Dallas and Fort Worth, you’ll find the darling little town of Grapevine which has an overachieving problem. Grapevine has been known to be the capital of a few things, you see. It’s been the Cantaloupe Capital of the World. It’s also known as the Wine Capital of Texas. My favorite however is in December when little ol’ Grapevine proudly becomes the Christmas Capital of the World.
More than 1,400 events. Forty days. Millions of lights. Christmas markets. Ice skating. Trains. Wine. Carolers. Pop-up bars. Two million pounds of ice sculptures. Santa underwater. This isn’t Christmas. This is a yuletide military operation.
Historic Main Street is the epicenter, a ridiculously charming stretch of old Texas storefronts that, come nightfall, looks like someone emptied the Christmas aisle of every craft store in America onto it. Lights crawl across buildings, giant ornaments fill the sidewalks, music floats out of shops and somewhere, statistically speaking, Santa Claus is probably within 50 yards of you.
But what makes Grapevine work is that you don’t just look at Christmas here. You become part of it.
At Vetro Glassblowing Studio, I got to stick molten glass into a 2,000-degree furnace and make my own Christmas ornament, which is significantly more satisfying than buying one that says Grapevine 2026 from a gift shop. You choose the colors, twist the glass and watch an actual artisan turn your questionable artistic decisions into something beautiful enough to hang on a tree.
A few minutes away, Christmas gets considerably more old-school at Nash Farm, a working historic farmstead where the holidays arrive without LEDs, Bluetooth speakers or inflatable Minions. We made traditional ornaments and ate cookies prepared from a recipe dating back to the 1860s, baked inside an old cast-iron stove. Turns out Christmas was a pretty damn good time before Amazon.
Then there’s the North Pole Express, where families pile aboard Grapevine’s vintage railroad for songs, hot chocolate, elves and an appearance from the big man himself. It is unapologetically wholesome and, judging from the faces of the kids onboard, still proof that wonder isn’t completely dead. While seeing Ol’ Saint Nick on a yuletide pimped out vintage locomotive with a gingerbread man in one hand and a boozy hot chocolate in the other was definitely my idea of an epic Christmas sighting, my favorite Santa sighting happened somewhere a bit less expected: underwater.
At SEA LIFE Grapevine, among sharks, rays and rescued sea turtles, Scuba Santa casually swims through the aquarium waving at children through the glass. Yes, he brings a Scuba Rudolph with him too, and with an underwater white board, he tells kids through the glass if they are on the naughty or nice list. You know, just like Hans Christian Anderson wrote about. It’s completely absurd. It’s also wonderful.
While this is literally a winter-wonderland for kids, Grapevine fortunately understands that Christmas isn’t just for children. This is Texas wine country, after all.
Just when you think you’ve seen it all you get wind of some sort of ice sculpture over at the Gaylord Texan Resort, where Christmas goes full Las Vegas. The enormous resort becomes a self-contained winter universe of lights, trees, tubing, snowballs and holiday displays, with the centerpiece being ICE!, an exhibition carved from more than two million pounds of ice and kept at a nipple-annihilating nine degrees Fahrenheit. They give you a giant parka before you enter. Trust me, wear it. There are enormous frozen sculptures, glowing rooms carved from ice and two-story ice slides, which somehow turn grown adults into six-year-olds almost instantly. This isn’t an ice sculpture, it’s an ice-alternate-universe.
One evening my wife and I set out to explore the adult side of the Christmas Capital and quickly discovered that nearly every door in town seemed to contain another delectable decision. There were Christmas cookie and wine pairings at Weinsteins Tasting Room. Elaborate specialty coffee and cookie flights that will supercharge your Instagram game at ReDefined Coffee.
Après-ski drinks at Chicken N Pickle despite the notable absence of any actual skiing. There’s Bad Santa’s Boathouse, where Christmas cheer gets a little less Miracle on 34th Street and a little more Santa has been drinking since noon. Fondue and bubbles inside private holiday igloos at Hotel Vin, and when all else derails everyone ends up at Live Christmas karaoke at the Third Rail in the jumping Harvest Hall.
When you need something substantial to absorb all this high-octane cheer, Grapevine delivers there too. Massive Texas breakfasts at Old West Cafe. Fabulous French fair at Chez Fabien. Can’t choose between perfect pizza or delicious smash burger? Don’t! Just go to Sauced and satisfy both. You must not however, under no circumstances, miss the absolutely preposterous sandwiches at Weinberger’s Deli, where lunch arrives with the structural integrity of a midsized sedan.
My favorite part about all this madness is that Grapevine doesn’t seem remotely interested in tasteful restraint. Nobody here is asking whether perhaps 900 Christmas events might have been enough. They have committed to the bit with such overwhelming enthusiasm that eventually your cynicism simply taps out.
Maybe that’s why more than a million people come here every Christmas season. In an age where everything seems increasingly optimized, digitized and delivered to our doors, Grapevine has built something wonderfully excessive around the simple idea of actually going somewhere and doing Christmas together.
It’s loud. It’s twinkling. You will need to upgrade the storage space for your phone. I mean, it’s Texas, of course they made Christmas bigger, and somehow, they made it so much better.
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