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Upcoming Events

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Candlelight at the Ranch

Candlelight at the Ranch

Step into a “living Christmas card” in Lubbock, where the National Ranching Heritage Center’s annual Candlelight at the Ranch re-creates a frontier prairie holiday scene. The center’s trails glow with more than 3,000 luminarias during the event (6-9 p.m. December 11-12) while reenactors depict Christmas festivities in about 15 of the center’s 19th-Century structures. There’s also an old-time fiddle dance in the 6666 barn and carolers strolling the grounds. In the center’s main gallery, Santa Claus visits with children and Brazos West plays cowboy Christmas music.


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Creatures of Light

Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence

The days grow short and the nights long during the Texas winter, but we’ve got nothing on the ocean depths and hidden caverns so sunless that creatures produce their own light to survive. At the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence explores the earth’s darkest ecosystems and the bioluminescent organisms that chemically generate their own light. See replica examples ranging from a vampire squid with glowing arm tips to glowworms in New Zealand caves and backyard fireflies, as well as live flashlight fish. Through February 21.


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Tom Lea

Four special exhibitions on Tom Lea

Looking to impress holiday visitors or beef up your Texas bona fides? Consider a trip to one of four special exhibitions on Tom Lea (1907-2001), the artist, author, and historian from El Paso known for his insightful chronicling of 20th-Century Texas and the world. Get a variety of perspectives on Lea at the El Paso Museum of Art’s Tom Lea as Draftsman and Illustrator; the Bullock Museum in Austin’s Tom Lea: Chronicler of 20th Century America; the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine’s Tom Lea Retrospective; and the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg’s Tom Lea, LIFE Magazine and World War II.


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Schmeckenfest

La Grange’s Schmeckenfest

Join the 30 teams vying to make the tastiest wassail and win the coveted title of “Schmeckenmeister” at La Grange’s Schmeckenfest. This eighth-annual kickoff to the Christmas season starts at 5 p.m. December 3 with a parade around the downtown square followed by a Christmas-tree lighting, Santa Clause appearance, children’s activities, food vendors, and after-hours shopping at downtown stores. The main draw is the wassail competition, in which visitors vote on their favorite version of the hot cider or spiced-ale drink in the categories of leaded (alcoholic) and unleaded.

 

Photos: (from top) Kevin Stillman; © AMNH/D. Finnin; “Rio Grande,” oil on canvas by Tom Lea, 1954, courtesy El Paso Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert W. Decherd; courtesy City of La Grange.

 

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Also in December...

Galveston’s Dickens on The Strand (December 4–6), Luminations at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (December 12–13), Nacogdoches’ Nine Flags Festival (November 19–December 12), and Hidalgo’s Festival of Lights (December 1–31).

All of these events and more can be found at the Texas Highways Events page 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

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Published monthly by the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Highways, the official travel magazine of Texas, encourages travel to and within the Lone Star State and tells the Texas story to readers around the world.


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