The jingle of bells on a horse drawn sleigh.

The scent of freshly baked gingerbread.

Or a stroll down a path of lights dusted with new fallen snow are just a few of the sights and sounds that tell us the Christmas season has arrived in New England.

I'm Lindsay Paris.

And as a lifelong New Englander, to me there is no better place to celebrate the holidays.

So come along from the coast of Maine to the hills of the Berkshires.

As we take a look at some of the events and traditions that make Christmas in New England so special.

If there's one artist whose work represents the quintessential 20th century American Christmas, it's Norman Rockwell.

To this day, Rockwell continues to be one of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, most beloved residents.

And what better ways there to honor that legacy than by restaging one of his classic holiday paintings.

There is perhaps no United States painter more well-known than Norman Rockwell.

His paintings often depict the comforting view of the country in the early to mid 1900s.

And when it came to recurring themes, Christmas was quite possibly the one he returned to more than any other.

Rockwell called many places in America Home.

But it was in Stockbridge that he decided to spend the last 25 of his 84 years.

Rockwell wanted to sort of pay homage to this town that became his home, and he loved so much.

When you visit Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas, you see that the painting is almost identical to the tableau that they recreate there.

So all of those buildings were still actually there, correct?

They are.

So it looks so much the same.

And then even asked the folks that use what was once Rockwell studio to put up a Christmas tree every year so that it looks just like it did when in that time when he painted it.

So what can you expect to see at the Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas celebration?

Everything from horse drawn carriage rides to street performances and all manner of fun and games playing out against the backdrop of a real world work of art.

This goes back 33 years.

The Stockbridge Chamber of Commerce put together this fundraising idea that could really just open up the concept of New England Christmas to visitors to give them a taste of what is so special.

People come here.

They love this event.

The iconic buildings themselves face off against the line of classic cars that match those seen in the painting.

The Red Lion Inn standing majestically at the far end of the tableau has been in continuous operation since the 1700s.

And if you walk a few doors down, you'll find a couple of the countryest of country stores having our building.

And a Norman Rockwell painting is like living in a postcard every day.

It's charming.

And village life here in Stockbridge is really high quality, a place to live and really enjoyable.

People come here from all over the world finding our little corner of paradise.

People come here to take in the old fashion, to slow down for a few minutes and to just share fellowship with each other.

If you look around here, everybody today in Stockbridge has a smile on their face.

The undisputed seasonal confectionary king has to be the candy cane.

Nelson's candy here in Wilton, New Hampshire, has been cranking out thousands of these handcrafted, traditional favorites for over a century peer in the plate glass windows.

And you'll see the Nelson's team making their sweets the old fashioned way with a little muscle and a lot of heart.

Owner Nancy Feraco took the shop over in 2019 from third generation candy maker Doug Nelson.

The Nelson family started making candy back in 1914 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.

Doug ended up here in New Hampshire with the antique taffy machines and the copper kettles.

So it was Doug who taught us how to make the candy canes.

I've been working for 30 years at the same restaurant in Keene, New Hampshire, and I happened to see an ad for old school, old fashioned, old style candy making I walk in.

Doug was here, Nancy was here.

They interviewed me right away, started the next Monday.

And yeah, it's just been a ton of fun since the Nelson's crew took us through the process of making a fine candy cane.

Starting with the original Nelson's copper kettle.

So what we do is, as you saw, we had the kettle that we dumped out onto the table.

So that was a combination of corn syrup, sugar, a little pinch of salt.

And then we boil that all up to about 300 degrees or so we pour onto this table.

Now, this table has cold water pipes underneath so we can cool it very quickly.

So while it's cooling, we add some colors to it.

We take sections off that we use for the stripes on the candy canes.

The rest of the portion we bring over to the machine where you saw us pulling it by hand that air aerates it.

That helps the sugar crystals to get larger and they get whiter.

So it starts off as that amber colored candy.

But then when we bring it back over, as you saw, it's almost bright white on the table.

We took our red that we cut into three stripes, a wide stripe, two narrow stripes.

We use water as a glue.

These tables here keep it warm enough so it doesn't harden up on us, too quickly.

So we have a chance to pull it and extrude the candy out to us still on the soft stage.

So we pull it out into the rope, twist it, and that's where Nathan does the final roll before bringing it over to the cold table where Margo can hook it.

I never dreamt that you would have regulars in the candy store, but we do.

They just feel like, okay, this is the real deal.

This stuff didn't come out of the factory.

I think what makes coming to this store very special is the wide variety of candy.

And, of course, Nelson's signature candy canes.

How big is that candy cane and how much does it weigh?

It feels to me like it weighs about £2.

The other thing that I think is really special about our canes is they're all made by hand, just like if.

Grandma was in your kitchen making cookies.

No, two of those cookies look exactly the same.

It's just like that.

Welcome to Rockport, Massachusetts.

This picture perfect seaside village along the Atlantic shore.

Rockport welcomes Santa and Mrs. Claus every year to its town wide celebration.

And as you'd expect in any proper New England fishing village.

Santa arrives not by sleigh, but by a lobster boat.

Merry Christmas.

Santa's arrival kicks off a month of fun festivities in Rockport, including a tree lighting, special shopping evening and more.

The big day had arrived in this big New England.

A steady rain didn't stop crowds from lining the t wharf on Bearskin Neck for that first glimpse of the lobster boat rounding the jetty with its very important guest aboard.

Ho, ho, ho.

Merry Christmas.

Ho, ho, ho.

Merry Christmas.

His journey complete.

Santa comes ashore boarding a 1940s fire engine to greet the crowds.

And even Santa couldn't pass up the chance to pick up some fresh seafood for those hungry elves back at the North Pole.

The elves if I don't bring lobster.

They're going to go on strike.

Rockport celebrates with a coastal flair befitting its status as part fishing village, part artist colony.

And you may recognize this small red fishing shack on the t wharf behind me.

Built in the 1840s, it was christened.

Motif Number one by painting instructor Lester Hornby.

Motif number one is known as the most painted building in America, but it remains a part of Rockport's working waterfront.

The bearskin Neck Peninsula is home to several fine art galleries, including this one owned by Scott Tubby.

So, Scott, you've had your gallery here in Rockport for ten years and you've participated in ten years of Christmas in Rockport.

It's a very special town.

It's almost like you stepped onto a movie set when you walk Bearskin Neck.

Here in Rockport, you have a gorgeous coastal location, all these amazing shops.

What makes it a really special place to visit at Christmastime?

Well, you mentioned it there.

Unique shops.

I love the lighted trees up and down Main Street.

The tree in Dock square has been around for more than 100 years.

So it's really a long standing tradition here in this town.

And I think it's the people.

It's the lights.

It's a big community event.

Everyone's smiling and happy.

And so that's why I don't want to be anywhere else.

One of the special things about New England is all of the history you'll encounter here in Puddle Dock, one of Portsmouth, New Hampshire's oldest neighborhoods.

Is the strawberry bank museum, a living history museum dedicated to recreating the lives of its historical residents.

Every year they host the public at the Candlelight Stroll, where you can step right into holiday celebrations.

From the 1790s to the 1950s.

300 years of history are represented within Strawberry Bank's ten acres.

The museum began as a preservation project to save this neighborhood from demolition.

The Museum was founded in 1958 and is actually the product of urban renewal.

Strawberry Bank pledged to restore each building that was saved to different periods of time.

We have a 17th century house through a 1950s house and everything in between.

Strawberry Banks Historic house season runs from May to October, but December is when the museum comes alive with a candlelight stroll.

Three weekends filled with holiday festivities.

Warm yourself by the bonfire and drink hot cider while listening to live music.

Wander through gorgeously bedecked antique homes and chat with colorful historical figures, including the neighborhood's World War Two air raid warden hey Fella, douse that light.

Candlelight Stroll draws a sellout crowd.

People come from all over.

So how many visitors you usually get each year?

So this year we're actually anticipating 10,000 visitors across the seven nights of stroll, and they come from greater New England.

But we do draw a crowd pretty much nationally.

When visitors come for a candlelight stroll, they can come in.

The vast majority of our historic homes, the Pridom House, which is our 1950s house.

People still recognize it.

For some people, it's like looking at their childhood family, Christmas.

And then in the Goodwin Mansion, we have interpreters in there who are interpreting Victorian life.

Nancy welcomed us into the Goodwin Mansion.

Tell us a little bit about the Goodwin family and who they were.

Mr. Goodwin served as governor here in the state of New Hampshire for two years.

Mrs. Goodwin was New Hampshire first lady.

She and Mr. Goodwin raised seven children here in this house.

We interpret the house to 1870.

When I enter the tableau here, what is happening?

Well, it's going to be an exciting time because it's going to be Christmas Eve.

Just the one time of year, Christmas Day that the children are allowed in the fall of Charlotte.

So it's an exciting time for them.

You've been a role player here for 15 years.

I have, Yes.

When they asked if I wanted to portray Mrs. Goodwin.

Took a lot of study to learn about her life.

I feel as if I know her personally.

And in the off season, I miss her.

What are the things that you look forward to the most about stroll?

Because I run stroll.

I get to see every aspect.

My coworker Dan calls the cider shed the beating heart of candlelight stroll.

It's warm, The cider is warm.

We add lights and we have a band playing in there.

It literally looks like it came out of a rom com.

You can't walk through the area without hearing songs saying dances.

Maybe something on the skating rink.

All kinds of characters walking around different time frames.

It's exciting.

Some people say, Oh, we come every year.

This part of our Christmas celebration.

I just love having people come through and know that I made part of their Christmas holiday more special.

Leaving Strawberry Bank, we followed our noses to the next stop just around the corner at the Portsmouth Historical Society.

We all know the current housing trend is towards downsizing.

But the best kind of tiny house is the one made out of royal icing peppermint sticks and gingerbread.

We found some of the region's greatest sugar frosted masterpieces right here at the Portsmouth Historical Society's annual Gingerbread House exhibition.

The gingerbread contest first started 32 years ago.

It was originally housed over in Strawberry Bank, but became so popular and outgrew that space.

It's shifted over here to the Portsmouth.

Historical Society about ten years ago, and it's become a really important part of vintage Christmas here in Portsmouth.

In this gingerbread house exhibition.

You'll find something for everyone from the traditional to the delightfully unconventional.

When you talk about nontraditional gingerbread, this is it.

This is the this is the epitome of nontraditional gingerbread.

But we love that.

All of a sudden, one night Cousin It popped into my head.

And so I was like, How about having the gingerbread holding Cousin It?

So they were each holding each other as Christmas gifts.

So I think Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

It starts in the kitchen right here and then moves through here to Mama bear and Papa bears chairs and baby bear shares.

And then we move into Baby Bear's bedroom, where.

Goldilocks is now sleeping soundly after she found the right spot for her.

So you basically just recreated the entire story of Goldilocks and the three bears in sugar?

Yes.

This house is so colorful.

I love all the candy all over it.

What was your inspiration for this?

I like to just use a lot of the candy that I have left over from all the other years.

So I kept sort of piling them on top of each other.

And this is how it ended up.

So when people walk in and they see all these amazing houses and they smell the smell of the gingerbread, what is their reaction?

That is the first thing everybody talks about.

Just the smell.

But there's really this wonderful sense of childlike awe that even adults get when they come in here, because it is this gingerbread fantasy land and you just get that immediate smile on people's faces, which makes me so happy there's something about Christmas and trains.

Maybe it's the influence of the children's classic, The Polar Express, or the gift of a train set under the tree.

But there's nothing like traveling through the New England countryside in an old fashioned Pullman car, sipping hot cocoa and singing carols on the way to Santa's workshop, All aboard!

Housed in the 1881 train depot in the small town of Thomaston, Connecticut.

The Railroad Museum of New England preserves the fascinating history of the Naugatuck Railroad.

But this is more than a museum.

It's an authentic experience.

At Christmas time, the railroad museum runs two holiday trains.

Both provide a magical voyage, complete with cocoa and cookies, a special gift, and visits from a few celebrity guests for Santa's Express.

We go north during the daytime.

Santa and Mrs. Claus are already on board the train, and they get to spend a lot of time with each family on board the train.

It's a very intimate environment, a lot of socialization between passengers.

The Northern Lights Limited.

It is is the same.

But what's cool about Northern Lights.

Limited is we actually pick Santa and Mrs. Claus up at the workshop.

All the kids are up against the glass waving the Santa.

Mrs. Claus.

I stepped onto this train and felt like I had gone back to the 1940s.

This car was built in 1948 by the Pullman Company and brought up the tale of the famous 20th Century Limited train between New York Grand Central Terminal and Chicago.

La Salle Street.

So the oldest car on our Christmas train is 1923, and the rest of the cars date from the 1920s, all the way up until our most modern car is probably the car we're standing in I opted for a 1920s art deco lounge car, which was elegant, yet comfortable and filled with a very enthusiastic kids.

As time has gone on, Christmas and trains have become more and more and more popular.

When these first started out, these were two car trains and a caboose.

Now we're up to seven cars on this train and two locomotives.

So you not only have the trains here, but you also have an entire museum devoted to railroad history.

That's correct.

So Christmas is one of the biggest fundraisers for the railroad museum in New England.

And what that enables us to do is bring cars like this here, restore some of our older equipment.

The museum has over 60 pieces in its collection of historic New England railroad equipment.

What do you love about working on the Christmas train?

Well, I get to see every single train every single day that we're running.

So what makes that really cool is you get to see Santa walking into the car and the whole uproar of people and Santa and cheering Santa on.

And Mrs. Claus and Rudolph and people that are on board get to see that once, which is still an incredible thing.

But to see that every day, it makes you really start to believe in the Christmas magic.

Caroling is a beloved New England holiday tradition, and here at the historic orchard Chapel in the tiny village of Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, locals are gathering for a carol sing by candlelight as the sun sets low in the sky on this winter solstice.

Eve, are you ready to sing?

You know, the thing about singing at these events is that loud is good.

Be loud.

This year, the word barn in nearby Exeter joined with the Unitarian Church of Hampton Falls to host the village's highly anticipated annual Sing Along.

A Candlelight carol.

Singing has been an ongoing tradition here at the Orchard Chapel for quite some time, and it's actually where we fell in love with the space.

It just sort of is the quintessential New England holiday setting.

We felt it's a one room, beautiful old meeting house with oil lamps, candle lights.

It's the perfect place for the community to come together and just has that festival spirit.

People from the community come and feel this, this small historic building, and it's just full of joy and kids and adults, everyone, they come with families and a lot of young people, a lot of kids.

And that's always a lot of fun.

So I am leading most things I have maybe one, maybe one song maybe two that I'll be doing, but primarily my role is to get everyone else to sing.

Do you sing?

I do not.

No, no, no.

You have to sing tonight.

It's not about skills, it's about volume.

Okay, good.

Can you be loud?

I can be loud.

That's all that's necessary.

The special day today is the solstice, and I think it's 4:48 p.m. Eastern time.

We're just about at the longest night of the year.

And so it would be really nice to see those days get longer and people celebrating the holiday.

I think singing is kind of a lost art, but around Christmas time people will really sing their hearts out.

What makes this event so special for the community?

It is about nothing but carols, singing.

All you have to do is just be loud and allow yourself to feel the joy of the season.

This is a free event that we do for the community, for everybody to come and be part of it.

We just hope that people come and enjoy.

Merry Christmas everyone.

During these longest nights of the year, New Englanders chased away the darkness with a glittering outdoor light displays.

And one of the most spectacular is here at coastal Maine.

Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, where over 750,000 LED lights line one mile of illuminated pathways.

The gardens was the figment of someone's imagination.

Back in 1992, a group of ten people got together and decided that they wanted to form coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, and we officially opened to the public in 2007.

And since then it's just been this incredible period of growth and really magic here.

You might not think that a botanical garden is the place to be in the middle of winter.

But in Maine, gardens aglow blossoms every year is a Christmas spectacle of light and color gardens.

Aglow is a completely immersive light show.

So you walk through over a mile of lights and 750,000 plus and it's based in Maine Nature.

So when you walk through, you never know what's going to be around the next corner.

In our woodland garden, for example, the lights go up the length of the tree into the sky.

And as with flowers here in the summer, when you see the lights, they just make you happy.

What does it take to stage a Herculean display of illumination like the ones at Gardens Aglow?

We got the answer right from the source Brent we're right here at the opening of the Gardens.

Aglow Exhibit at coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

And this is a massive, massive display.

So how do you put this all together?

Well, it takes a whole team of us to kind of make it happen.

But the process behind design, so that's about a 16 week process from the inception of starting the design, thinking about colors, what's going where.

Then we start putting up lights around Labor Day.

So it takes us about 11 weeks to get all of the lights up.

We have, I would say, over 100 staff and volunteers that lend a hand to make it happen.

All staff comes out, helps do some lighting.

We all make it happen.

So it's awesome.

So we're out here tonight in this perfect New England snowstorm.

So what can people look forward to seeing tonight while they're walking down these paths with the snow falling around them?

Yes, you'll see lots of lighted flowers, over 250 of them, actually.

A couple of moose, some ducks, a really beautiful hummingbird that we have, 25 plus giant mushrooms.

So it's kind of just very whimsical and you're surrounded by all the lights and the balloons over the ponds and the beautiful orange yellow mushrooms kind of really stand out.

Everybody that comes just has a wonderful time sometimes, you know, this time of year can be a little stressful, but by the time they get here and they walk out here, it's sort of restorative.

And you look around at these lights and there's nothing but fun and whimsy.

And sometimes that moves people to tears because it's so beyond anything they were expecting.

What do you love about Christmas in New England?

As a fellow native New Englander.

I love everything about Christmas I love the decorations, I love the lights, the traditions, the music, the spirit of giving.

We are in this part of our country where so much of our early imaging of Christmas is really situated.

We're right where folks, when they dream of an early American Christmas, they think about New England.

I love the cold like where we are right now.

Our cheeks are getting a little pink, like our nose is a little cold.

I feel it's very humble, family orientated, almost like if you take a step back to a time that's simpler.

I have never known Christmas anywhere else.

I grew up here.

There is still such a small town atmosphere and people do go to their neighbor's house and have a Christmas party still, you know, it's very authentic.

And I think some of the things that are so special about Christmas in my mind, we really still have those traditions here.

What I love about Christmas in New England is the way people in our little corner of the globe come together to create joy and wonder for all at this most festive time of year.

Merry Christmas.