120 Days of Christmas, 2026–27 edition

Inspiration

There’s a town called Rovaniemi, tucked above the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland, that claims to be Santa Claus’s official hometown. I visited with my family in 2018, and was pleasantly surprised. There’s a fully immersive Santa’s workshop, complete with radar tracking equipment, a dozen crisp-uniformed elves, and a Santa whose beard was persuasively full and snowy. I thought it was perfect. My daughter thought Santa’s beard looked too waxy. A fatal giveaway. But you don’t need to cross into the Arctic to find Christmas magic. Chances are, there’s a stretch of storefronts in your town glowing with display lights and garland, where that same wonder lives closer to home. Somewhere between the speakers playing Bing Crosby, the ex- tension-cord-lit nativity, and the velvet-roped Santa throne near the pretzel stand, the spell still works. For kids, it’s a chance to whisper wishes. For adults, it’s nostalgia wrapped in streetlight sparkle, with the occasional pang of window-display envy. Holiday windows have drawn crowds since the late 19th century. Macy’s debuted mechanized scenes in 1874, setting off a friendly arms race of snowy dioramas, animated snowflakes, and miniature trains. By the mid-20th century, window gazing had become a seasonal tradition. A city stroll to rival trimming the tree at home. Around the same time, Santa’s grottos were popping up across the Atlantic. Lewis’s Bon Marché in Liverpool introduced one of the first in 1879, a dedicated North Pole experience complete with Santa meet-and-greet. American stores followed fast, each offering their own twist on the magic. And what a parade of Santas we’ve seen since: the gently magical, the visibly exhausted, the ones with accents that suggest Boston more than the North Pole, and the grizzled old pros whose beards might just be the real deal.