Special this Week
What’s your take on this turning of the year? Do you lament your frost-nipped fingers and freezing toes? Or do you embrace each of the seasons in its turn, rushing out to play with Jack Frost and inviting Old Man Winter to stay for a spell?
Whichever way you feel — and each of us seems to align on one side of the other — this Bay Weekly is the paper for you. For this issue brings you the whole holiday season in our annual special issue, Seasons Bounty.
If you welcome the cold, you’ll find dozens of ways to get out and enjoy it with other cool-bloods. Turkey trots start this week, framing Thanksgiving, in six locations. Advancing the season, winter festivals start up at the same time, and at SPCA’s Lights on the Bay and Watkins Regional Park’s Festival of Lights, you active sorts get to run them first (Nov. 16 and 17), before the cars come in.
Lots more Illuminations give walkers brilliant reasons to come out into the cold. Enjoy them small at Willow Oak Flower and Herb Farm, and large at Annmarie Garden and London Town. At the National Zoo in Washington, some of the animals will be staying out late to enjoy the lights with you.
Speaking of animals, your dogs get to walk with you at Lights on the Bay (Nov. 15 18) and Annmarie Garden (Jan. 1).
Dig through for lots of other reasons to meet winter on its own terms. You’ll find parades, hayrides, town tours, ice skating at seven rinks, the ticket line for Colonial Garden’s A Christmas Carol and Clayville Railroad’s Outdoor Train Garden — to name a few among many.
For all of you shivering on the other side of the seasonal preference divide, Seasons Bounty’s 56 pages overflow with ways to turn the season to rejoicing. Events both small and grand — from small artworks to Grand Illuminations — feature animals; Living Nativity scenes, often with animals; Legos; trains — in eight magical miniature railroads; song, including three singings of The Messiah; dance, including five Nutcrackers; seasonal theatrical productions; plus all the occasions of shopping and eating you can fit into seven weeks of winter holiday celebrations.
Just for Kids, we’ve tracked down 29 occasions for early visits with Santa, that master multitasker who never lets the many demands of holiday preparations keep him away from the ones he loves, especially little people, dogs and cats.
Preparing this Guide for you keeps Bay Weekly almost as busy as Santa’s workshop. “I start working on it in earnest around August, so getting Seasons Bounty to you takes me 250 hours over three months,” says Kathy Knotts, who gathers all these seasonal opportunities for you.
Just as busy is Betsy Kehne, who designs all the ads that underwrite this massive undertaking. Elving away just as hard are Audrey Broomfield, Donna Day and Susan Nolan, who recruit the advertisers who invest their futures in Bay Weekly and you, its readers.
Almost at the end of the line are Alex Knoll and I, I editing and he combining all the raw material into the beautiful magazine prepared for your holiday pleasure. Last in line are the five driver teams who bring our winter enhancement to your pick-up spot.
Open it up; you’ll find you can’t do the holidays without it.
Of course you get all that plus Bay Weekly, full as usual with stories that keep you on the ever-refreshed front line of life in Chesapeake Country.