For Christmas, Ted and I decided to give ourselves the gift of the Missouri Botanical Garden Glow followed by dinner at a restaurant. Just as we didn’t have time to walk and admire the holiday lights and decorations on Historic Main Street before Christmas, we didn’t have time to attend Glow before Christmas either. Like Historic Main Street, Glow opens on Thanksgiving Day (timed tickets required for this event) but remains open through the first weekend after New Year’s Day.

Here’s the entrance to Glow.

The grounds’ 79 acres were covered with light displays. At an ambling and admiring pace, it took us about an hour-and-a-half to walk the entire path on a clear, calm winter evening with temperatures in the mid-30s. A variety of large St. Louis area corporations sponsored many of the light displays.

I couldn’t help wondering how the decorators managed to cover the trees in the picture above so thoroughly with lights. The trunks and bases of the trees looked very authentic, and the display title included the word “oak” in its name. The leaves were oak-shaped, but the trees were not. Curious minds want to know, so I took a close look at the branches to see how the lights were attached. That made it obvious that the trees were not actually rooted in the garden, which led me to wonder how the installers transported and stored the “trees.” I looked even closer and now I know. Check the assembly lines indicated by my arrows in the two photos below. The trunk is comprised of two pieces, the large branches attach to it, and the smaller branches attach to the larger ones. Some assembly required. 🙂

Artificial or not, the little patch of trees was a pretty display. Maybe we should buy one or two of these for our own holiday lighting.

I remember this display from our Glow visit in 2023, but I still like it. The tree is one of three set in an emptied reflecting pool, and the multiple layers of lights over it create an illusion of water below. (The illusion probably disappears in daylight when you can see the web of the lights’ electrical wires in the empty pool.)

Some of the displays are static; others are not. This one (another photo of the blue tree above) is not. I took a short video to capture some of the lighting changes. A variety of holiday music plays throughout the park. Turn on your audio if you want to hear some of it.

Here’s another light display.

I didn’t think a still photo did justice to this display, so I took another short video. Again, you can listen to the music if you want to. It’s easy to see why we chose Glow as our Christmas gift.

When we reached this point, we were nearly back at the main entrance where our walk began.

We decided to have our Christmas gift dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory in the Chesterfield Valley–about halfway between the Botanical Garden and our house. By the time we arrived, the crowd had thinned, our server was very nice, the pasta was delicious, and we finished our meal with the Factory’s signature spumoni ice cream.

Now our 2024 winter holiday season is over. We went to the International Women’s Brass Conference concert, celebrated with our family, spent time with friends, enjoyed the holiday lights on Historic Main Street, and had a beautiful evening at the Garden Glow. It was a nice way to end 2024 and to begin 2025. Happy new year!

Ted and I always enjoy walking on Historic Main Street in St. Charles when the holiday lights and decorations are on display from Thanksgiving until New Year’s. We didn’t have time to do this before Christmas, so we went on the Saturday after Christmas. The lights and decorations were still there, but the international Christmas characters, the carolers, and the drum and fife corps no longer perform after Christmas Eve, when a parade sends Santa on his way to deliver gifts to all the good boys and girls.

In winter, the sun sets early enough that the lights are pretty by 4:30 p.m., so that’s when we went. We discovered an advantage to being there on a Saturday winter evening: the shops were open until 9:00 and we could see their merchandise through the windows. We regularly shop at several stores in this area, but we haven’t been in all of them, so it was fun to see what they sell and to make plans to visit some new places the next time we go to Main Street.

The boutique shops on Historic Main Street are all in old houses–some dating back to the 1600s–and people live on the upper level of many of the shops. I think every single shop had decorations and/or holiday lights.

The trees along the street were also decorated, making this a pretty place to walk on a beautiful winter evening. You can tell by the number of parked cars that we were a small part of the crowd looking at the lights–even after Christmas! I was lucky to find a parking spot. (Someone left, so I pulled in.)

The downtown parks had Christmas lights in the trees.

The trees in Frontier Park at the Missouri River glowed with holiday lights along the Katy Trail (foreground).

This tree had a small sleigh and presented a cute photo op for the parents of this little boy.

St. Charles apparently keeps and re-uses its decorations for many years. In 2017, the same sleigh was placed beside a tree along the riverfront in Frontier Park. Our family group attended the Christmas Eve parade that year and I took a photo of Dylan pretending to pull the sleigh, Sky holding the pretend reins, and Teddy along for the ride.

As always, Christmas is special whenever it’s celebrated with family and friends. Kathy and Annette arrived on the afternoon of the 23rd and stayed at our house. Dean and Dylan had to work that day, but Kari and Theo joined us for the afternoon and dinner. I served baked potato soup–winter comfort food–with Cherries on a Cloud for dessert. The photo shows the entire dessert, not one serving–it’s large enough to cut into twelve pieces. (It’s a baked meringue shell with a marshmallow / cream cheese / whipped cream filling, topped with cherries.)

Kari’s family hosted us for the family Christmas celebration. Sky and Adelle were able to come from Rockford, IL to celebrate Christmas with our family on Christmas Eve and with Adelle’s family (nearby) on Christmas Day. Dean had a cozy fire in the family room, and everyone shifted from room to room throughout the afternoon and evening, forming a variety of interesting conversational groups.

With ten of us, there were a lot of presents under the tree. (Note the unique tree topper.)

For dinner, Kari prepared a family favorite that we describe as “ham dinner.” It includes baked ham, mashed potatoes with delicious ham gravy, green beans, and Waldorf salad. I made a marshmallow and whipped cream torte with a chocolate crumb crust for dessert.

After dinner, it was time to open the gifts. (Some of us had colds and others didn’t want to catch a cold, thus the masks.)

Even the cat(s) had some gifts. You can see the milk carton cat bed in the photo. The cat looks cautious because it is watching a wind-up toy move around in unpredictable patterns and the cat isn’t sure what to do about it.

The next morning (Christmas Day), Kathy and Annette went to Columbia to celebrate the holiday with Annette’s son, and the rest of us relaxed. Everyone at Kari’s house was busy with individual activities for a while in the afternoon, so Kari came over to spend a little time with us. Naturally, we talked about how nice the family Christmas had been. In the evening, Ted and I settled in for a movie with a Christmas cookie snack. A good time was had by all during this special season. Merry Christmas!

With Thanksgiving falling as late as possible this year, Christmas arrived in a hurry. Even worse, we had a major weather change in early December, which sometimes triggers laryngitis for me. This time, I had an unusually bad case and felt terrible for a week, setting our Christmas preparations behind schedule. As a result, the only community holiday event we attended before Christmas was the Holiday Brass Concert at a church in St. Louis County.

I attended the concert with a friend last year and it was so good, I wanted Ted to hear it this year. It’s presented by the International Women’s Brass Conference and includes brass and percussion instruments. The IWBC presents four performances each December in the Manchester United Methodist Church. The church seats 1,200 people, and all four concerts sell out every year. Ted and I bought our Dec. 2 tickets in early June as soon as they went on sale. The concert is indescribable. No photos were allowed, so I’m going to describe some of the concert highlights, but words cannot begin to do justice to the experience.

The church is beautifully decorated for Christmas and has excellent acoustics, both of which greatly contribute to the experience. There is a large balcony above the sanctuary, flanked by a smaller balcony on each side, as well as a large balcony above the rear of the nave. An outstanding choir I estimated at around 80-100 members performs in the back of the sanctuary, and musical pieces are performed in the aisles, along the side walls, and in the corners of the nave, as well as in all the balconies. In addition to every variety of brass instrument, there are marimbas, alphorns, bagpipes, a piano, and soloists. A sign language interpreter is present during vocal musical pieces.

Except for the final selection, the entire group of musicians does not perform simultaneously in a concert-style seating arrangement, nor do they always perform in the front of the nave. Selections are performed by smaller ensembles of 4-12 musicians at a time, with individual musicians participating in multiple ensemble combinations. While one ensemble performs somewhere in the building–sometimes vocally, sometimes instrumentally–the next moves silently and invisibly into place at another station. As soon as the first ensemble finishes, there is time for brief applause before the next ensemble begins. With each musical selection followed by a piece performed in a different area of the nave, the music seems to surround the audience. The variety of ensembles and performance locations is a highlight of this concert.

The selections and the quality of music are impressive. Four alphorns played “Silent Night”–two in the front balcony and one on each side of the rear balcony; the bagpipers played as they came down the center aisle; for one song, the choir entered from the rear and spread along the two side walls.

Even a video would not capture the experience of this holiday concert. The best I can offer visually is a picture of a man in Halifax, NS playing an alphorn. Even so, his alphorn is white, not brass-colored. An alphorn varies from 9.5-13.0 feet long and, at full volume, can be heard over several kilometers. (A friend of mine knows an alphorn player and asked him if the instrument comes apart for transporting it. The answer is that there is a case for it, but it does not come apart.) Imagine one of these horns playing from each of four balcony corners simultaneously. Awesome!

Ted and I have already marked our calendar to order our tickets in early June for next year’s IWBC Holiday Brass Concert.

While Ted and I were shopping for holiday items, I saw this red dress at Penney’s. It was so-o-o-o tempting to buy it and shock the family by wearing it to our family Christmas gathering, but I resisted and left it for someone else.

I had a Barnes & Noble gift certificate from Kari and Dean burning a hole in my purse, so I went to the store’s big Christmas sale to spend the gift card, getting two books for the price of one.

While I was there, I saw this display. Someone needs to pay attention. The sign says “One-of-a-Kind Gifts” but there are numerous identical items on display. That’s not what “one” means.

It’s the Christmas season, so I’m displaying my Christmas Lego collection–a traditional exchange Thom and I have had since he was old enough to buy a few Christmas presents with his allowance. The tradition continues. The snowman with the red hat in the right corner is this year’s item from Thom.

Have you ever seen a mini puzzle with pieces like this? Kathy and Annette found one for me.

I always enjoy all the Christmas decorations and traditions. Merry Christmas to all.