Christmas in Thornton-le-Dale

The village lights are switched on at the Village Hall on Pickering Road (YO18 7LG) on Saturday 5 December, from 4.30pm to 8.30pm. Santa arrives and takes visits in his grotto, and there is live music, mulled wine, hot food and stalls; last year's evening was free. It is run by a team of volunteers, and the stalls and donations pay for the display: more than 4,000 lamps go up from the end of September and the bill is around £8,000 a year. Last year's evening, on 6 December 2025, ran from 4.30 to 7; the 2026 times for Santa and the switch-on itself have not been published, so arrive for 4.30 if you want to see both.

The display is not just the Green. The beck through the village centre is lit along both banks, with coloured lights reflected in the water, illuminated swans sitting in the stream, a lit reindeer by the cottages and strings of lights across the road, and a white chandelier of lights hangs over the Green opposite the Buck Inn. The photographs on this page were taken on the night in December 2025.

Both village pubs, the New Inn and the Buck Inn, serve Christmas Day lunch and are open on Boxing Day. Christmas Day needs booking, usually weeks ahead; ring them directly rather than relying on an online form. Outside the pubs almost nothing in the village opens on Christmas Day, and there are no buses: in recent years the Coastliner 840 has run a Saturday service on Christmas Eve, finishing early evening, and nothing on Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year's Day, with the first buses on the 27th. The 2026 festive timetable is published in December; it is worth checking if you are staying without a car.

The tea rooms and shops do not publish Christmas hours until late November, and when they do they post them on their own Facebook pages, which is how businesses here talk to their customers. Each entry in our village directory links to the business's own page, so that is the place to check in the week before you come. We will update this section in the first week of December with what has been announced.

What can be said now: most of the shops open on Christmas Eve, Wardills among them, but they shut early, so do any Christmas Eve shopping in the morning. The ice cream parlour closes for the winter months. Between Christmas and New Year the pattern varies shop by shop, which is where the Facebook pages come in.

The Mathewsons museum and shop on the main road through the village are open seven days a week from 9am to 4pm, and have not published any different hours for Christmas week; if you are planning a visit on Christmas Eve or between Christmas and New Year, ring first. The December auction, the last Bangers & Cash sale of the year, is on 2, 3 and 4 December at the Pickering saleroom, with the public viewing week from Wednesday 25 November to Tuesday 1 December (Monday to Friday 9 to 5, Saturday 9 to 12, £5 entry). The viewing week ends four days before the lights switch-on, so a weekend in the village can take in both. Our Bangers & Cash pages have the full detail.

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway's Santa Express runs from Pickering station, five minutes' drive or a bus stop away, on 28 and 29 November, 5, 6, 12, 13, 19 and 20 December, and 22, 23 and 24 December, with departures at 10.30, 12.00, 13.30 and 15.00. It is an hour's round trip to Levisham and back; Santa visits every family at their seat and every child goes home with a gingerbread-man plush and a book. Tickets are £29.50 in November, £34.50 on the first two December weekends and £39.50 from 19 December, the same price for adults and children, plus a £1.50 booking fee; book on nymr.co.uk rather than turning up. All departures are from Pickering. NYMR also runs a Tinsel Tipple evening train for over-14s, an over-16s Bloody Merry Christmas evening, Christmas lunches on the Pullman and winter fish-and-chip trains; the Moors Christmas guide on our sister site lists them all. Pickering's own lights switch-on is Saturday 28 November, 2pm to 5.30pm in the Market Place, with Santa arriving and the lights on at 4.15pm, so the two villages' evenings are a week apart.

No Christmas event is listed for Dalby this year, but the visitor centre at Low Dalby sells real Christmas trees in the first half of December (last year from 29 November to 14 December, 10am to 4pm, with free parking for buyers; the 2026 dates are not yet posted). The forest itself is open every day from 8am to 8pm; the visitor centre is open 9 to 4 through the winter, closed on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day and shutting at noon on Christmas Eve. Parking is charged: £3.50 for an hour, £6.50 for two, £9.50 for three, £12.50 for four and £15 for the day, with no charge for a drive through completed within 30 minutes. The forest roads are firm underfoot when the moor paths are mud, and the Ellerburn circuit from the village is a short one for a frosty morning. Our walks pages have both.

For a visitor staying a few days: the Santa Express and Pickering on one day, the lights evening on the Saturday if your dates allow, Castle Howard's "A Dickens of a Christmas" (12 November to 3 January, house tickets from £24, booking essential) on another, and Whitby for the Krampus Run on 5 December if the children are old enough for men in horned masks. The days are short, about 8.20am to 3.40pm at the solstice, so plan the walk for the morning and the pub for the afternoon.