All Ages

Support Manchester Merchants, shop around town & collect stamps in your Holiday Passbook and you will have a chance to win an APPLE WATCH! This traditional passport shopping event will give participants an opportunity to see unique array of merchants in town, take advantage of holiday discounts, and maybe even win a great prize!

Celebrate the season with us, friends and gingerbread fun. Decorate your very own gingerbread house and take it home to eat or display as a centerpiece during your holiday celebrations. Enjoy endless decorating options, from frosted roofs, gum drop fences and cookie christmas trees.

Where else can you see Santa arrive by lobster boat? Santa will arrive at Rockport’s T-Wharf on Rockport Harbor following a brisk lobster boat ride across Sandy Bay. Then Santa will climb up onto a Rockport Forest Fire truck and proceed along T-Wharf and Mt. Pleasant Street to the Old Firehouse led by Rockport cub scouts.

The Nisse – a farm elf from Scandinavian folklore – will visit Appleton Farms. While we wait for the Nisse to awake from his slumber in the hayloft, there will be children's holiday crafts, cookies and hot chocolate, and carolers. Upon his decent from the hayloft, the Nisse must be offered his porridge. If his porridge isn't just right, he will play tricks on the farmers and tie the cows tails in knots! If he likes his porridge, he will let us help spread the magic seeds bringing good fortune to the farm in the year ahead.