The winter season at Biltmore includes the anniversary of when George Washington Vanderbilt opened his new Biltmore House for the first time to family and friends on Christmas Eve 1895, and the elaborate decorations throughout the grand chateau through January 3, 2010, offer visitors a chance to experience what it must have been like to be a guest that night more than 100 years ago.
Christmas at Biltmore is known as one of the largest holiday displays in the Southeast and takes in the entirety of the Biltmore House and its 8,000-acre estate.
The decorations include 100 Christmas trees, hundreds of wreaths and bows, and hundreds of poinsettias. The display uses 30,000 lights in the house and 150,000 additional lights around the estate plus 10,000 feet of fresh garland and more than 25,000 ornaments. A 34-foot Fraser fir serves as the centerpiece in the 72-foot high Banquet Hall, decked out in lights and surrounded by hundreds of gift boxes in bright wrappings. Songs of the season emanate from the Banquet Hall organ. Outside, the front lawn glows in the lights that adorn a 55-foot Norway spruce and eight islands of smaller lighted trees and nursery shrubs.
Through January 2, a separate entry to the estate at night includes Candlelight Christmas Evenings at Biltmore, featuring luminaries and a brilliant display of twinkling lights on the front lawn. In the Winter Garden, ballroom dancers will perform in vintage costume. Musicians will play seasonal music and choirs will perform European carols. A story teller will read from traditional holiday tales such as “The Little Match Girl,” “The Gift of the Magi,” and the Charles Dickens favorite, “A Christmas Carol.”
Ideas for the 2009 holiday décor theme came from the recent restoration and preservation of the grand Louis XV suite in the Biltmore House, and Biltmore staff will give free holiday seminars on how to create Vanderbilt-inspired decorations. The seminars include “Centerpieces for Holiday Entertaining” and “Decorating a Christmas Wreath.”
Guests can learn how chocolate and red wine go together exquisitely in the seminar “Red Wine and Chocolate,” pairing Biltmore Estate wine with several varieties of heavenly chocolate.
The entire Biltmore estate offers a wide variety of activities during the holiday and winter season. During the day, Christmas at Biltmore includes tours of the Biltmore House and Gardens, the River Bend Farm and Barnyard, and the Winery with complimentary wine tastings. Through December 20th, Santa Claus visits children at the River Bend Barn. Festive meals are served on the estate at Bistro, Deerpark Restaurant, Stable Café and the Dining Room at the Inn on Biltmore Estate. Biltmore’s retail shops are ideal for holiday shopping. Guests can take horse-and-carriage rides—blankets included—or spend hours exploring acres of landscaped winter gardens.
Two generations of the Vanderbilt family were born in one of the four Biltmore House rooms opened to the public for the first time in 2009, so family is an unofficial theme in this year’s Christmas events. The magnificent decorations are like no other, and they make the holidays an ideal time for families to give themselves the gift of a Biltmore visit.
