Holiday Events and Listings 2010:
Saturday 23 October - Saturday 18 December
Charity Christmas Card Shop
Cards For Good Causes charity Christmas card shop. Over 300 cards from 40 different national and local charities. Advent calendars, wrappings and small gifts also available. Please come and browse through our excellent choice of cards - our charities really appreciate your support. 10 am - 4 pm
Oxford Town Hall Monday - Saturday
Category: General Festivities
Saturday 13 November - Sunday 12 December
Gulliver's Travels - A Fairytale Christmas at Blenheim Palace
Throughout the Christmas season the Palace will be decorated with magical displays depicting highlights from the classic tale of a giant lost in the miniature land of Lilliput. Glowing fires provide a warm welcome in the State Rooms and each will feature displays bringing the magic of this much loved tale to life. The Great Hall will feature a travelers theme with a boat and hot air balloons amidst the grand scale of magnificent Christmas trees. In the Saloon the grand table will be set for a Royal Lilliputian feast as featured in the film, swathed in beautiful white and gold, with a place setting for a giant at one end of the grand banquet table!
The land of Lilliput will be brought to life in the Long Library with exquisite Dolls Houses provided by the Dolls House Emporium.
Blenheim Palace
Category: General Festivities
Friday 26 November - Sunday 12 December
Oxford Christmas Market
The Oxford Christmas Market is a German-style Christmas Market which takes place in the heart of the city at Oxford Castle and includes beautifully decorated wooden stalls offering wonderful Christmas gifts, Glühwein, gingerbread, German Bratwurst - to name just a few. Local choirs and brass bands will perform Christmas carols throughout the 17 days, adding to the festive atmosphere, and a small Victorian carousel will delight the children. And Father Christmas is to visit the Christmas Market over the weekends. Free admission, easily accessible. Open Thursday - Saturday 10 am - 8 pm and Sunday - Wednesday 10 am - 6 pm.
Oxford Castle
Category: Arts and Crafts Especially for Children Festivals, Fairs and Markets General Festivities Music
Friday 26 November - Wednesday 22 December
Oxford Castle Christmas Grotto and Children’s Winter Wonderland
Oxford Castle Gardens will twinkle with a Christmas Grotto and a Children’s Winter Wonderland with art work by local children on display. 10am to 6pm
Oxford Castle
Category: Especially for Children
Friday 26 November
Christmas Light Night
Oxford's Castle, Town Hall, theatres and museums will throw open their doors to the public for one-off late night viewings of their exhibitions and displays enhanced by special performances. Advent Carol services will also take place at St Ebbe's Church and Wesley Memorial Church and you will be offered a warm welcome at St Michael at the North Gate.
Lantern Procession 6.15pm - 6.45pm - the procession will wind its way through the city streets, switching on the Christmas lights as it goes.
Phil Kline's Unsilent Night - Procession - Oxford Contemporary Music invites you to bring your portable stereos to join Oxford's first Unsilent Night promenade. Composer Phil Kline's free outdoor participatory sound sculpture, recorded on cassettes, CDs and mp3s and played through a roving swarm of ghetto blasters and other audio devices, is a winter wonderland of shimmering bells, chimes and grand chorals. The walking sound sculpture debuted in New York in 1992 and is now annually performed there and in cities around the world.
Category: General Festivities
Saturday 27 November - Thursday 23 December
Santa's Grotto
Santa Claus is coming to Town! Arriving in style during Christmas Light Night, he will spend the run up to Christmas in the magical grotto built for him by Oxford school children with help from Creation Theatre Company keeping to this year's environmental theme. Children can visit Santa and take part in Creation station workshops to get into the Christmas spirit.
Oxford Town Hall
Category: Especially for Children
Saturday 27 November - Sunday 28 November
Christmas starts here!
Get your Christmas shopping underway with our beautiful and unique gift ideas provided by local artists and craftspeople.
We'll celebrate the festive season with wreath and decoration-making demonstrations, festive food and free visits to Santa Claus for the under-10's.
Browse our beautiful decorations and present ideas in the Gift Barn and pick up your Waterperry-grown Christmas tree.
The Gallery also has a wide range of gifts to suit every taste and budget and the Teashop offers seasonal fare as well as the chance to buy festive produce as gifts.
Waterperry Gardens
Category: Arts and Crafts General Festivities
Wednesday 01 December - Thursday 23 December
Christmas Trees on Sale at Blenheim Palace
Freshly-harvested Christmas trees will be on sale at Flagstaff Gate at the Palace from the 1st December. To pre-order call 01993 813196 or email christmastrees@blenheimpalace.com
Category: General Festivities
Thursday 02 December
Christmas Carol Service
Traditional Christmas carols with singing from Oxford's welsh male voice choir
Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes University
Category: Music
Friday 03 December - Sunday 16 January
Cinderella
Tick, tock, tick, tock, panto time is fast approaching. Don't miss out on what promises to be the biggest and best party in the land!
Cinders is but a lowly housemaid with two rather ugly sisters. The handsome prince is looking for a bride. Will true love take its course (assisted by our heroine's Fairy Godmother and the broken-hearted Buttons)? Can Cinders compete with her sisters to win the heart of the kingdom's most eligible bachelor? And, who knew getting your feet measured could be so important?
Legendary panto-maker Peter Duncan returns to the Playhouse for the fifth year running having previously delighted audiences with non- stop fun, great actors, memorable songs and plenty of audience participation.
You and your whole family are guaranteed to have a ball at this year's Oxford Playhouse pantomime. Cinderella is one of the best-loved fairy tales of all time, bursting with boos, cheers, songs and laughter. This is one festive bash you don't want to be late for!
Oxford Playhouse
Category: Theatre
Saturday 04 December
Commotio Christmas Concert
Seasonal concert featuring Christmas choral music featuring Winter, the final set of motets from the Four Seasons by Edward Cowie
St Barnabas Church, Jericho
Category: Music
Saturday 04 December
Christmas Extravaganza
Oxford's hip hop and street dance masters Messy Jam tear up the floor with an evening of mesmerising moves.
Pegasus Theatre
Category: Dance
Tuesday 07 December - Sunday 02 January
The Sound of Music
Connie Fisher returns as Maria in the world’s best-loved musical, THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
Starring alongside Connie are two of the UK's favourite stage performers; Michael Praed as Captain von Trapp and Marilyn Hill Smith as Mother Abbess.
This lavish and critically acclaimed production tells the uplifting true story of the Von Trapp family’s flight across the mountains and works its magic once again, for young and old alike.
With its unforgettable score THE SOUND OF MUSIC touches the hearts of all ages and brims over with some of the most memorable songs ever performed on the musical stage including My Favorite Things, Do-Re-Mi, Climb Ev’ry Mountain, The Lonely Goatherd, Sixteen Going on Seventeen, and of course the glorious title song The Sound of Music. It’s the perfect family treat!
New Theatre
Category: Theatre
Saturday 11 December - Sunday 12 December
School Choirs at Blenheim Palace
On the final weekend of the season (11th and 12th December) a variety of special Christmas entertainment will take place in the Palace.
Saturday 11th December
Combe Primary School: 11am - 11.20am, 11.50am - 12.10pm
Woodstock Primary School: 2pm - 2.20pm, 2.50pm -3.10pm
Sunday 12th December
The Marlborough School: 11am - 11.20am, 11.50am - 12.10pm
Cranford House School: 2pm - 2.10pm, 2.50pm - 3.10pm
Blenheim Palace
Category: Music
Tuesday 14 December - Wednesday 15 December
Carols and Capers
Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band - A unique celebratory show of Christmas music on renaissance and modern instruments. Maddy and the Carnival Band put their inimitable stamp on familiar and not-so-familiar festive fare with a refreshing cavalier attitude and plenty of humour.
Oxford Town Hall
Category: General Festivities
Wednesday 15 December - Saturday 18 December
The Nativity
A new production revisiting the terror and beauty of the Christmas Story
Pegasus Theatre
Category: Theatre
Thursday 16 December
Christmas Concert
EMMY and BAFTA winning composer and broadcaster Howard Goodall leads this concert, which boasts a unique Christmas theme. A wide array of yuletide favourites will entertain the whole family.
Sheldonian Theatre
Category: Music
Saturday 18 December
Christmas at Christ Church
Stephen Darlington, director
Jean Marsh & Robert Hardy CBE, readers
Take a break from the incessant rush and bustle of shopping, parties and preparations and stop awhile. This evening's event is the start of Christmas for many of the regular audience, a chance to link into the spirit of Christmas through inspirational words and music from across the centuries performed in this stunningly majestic and spiritual of venues. Tickets sell out every year, so do book early.
Tickets £40 £26 £18 £10
Ends 10.15pm
Christ Church Cathedral
Category: General Festivities Music Theatre
Sunday 19 December
Lord Mayor's Charity Christmas Carols
Join the Lord Mayor of Oxford for this traditional event of carols and Christmas music. Proceeds go to the Lord Mayor's charities which are the Thams Valley & Chiltern Air Ambulance Trust and Valerie Taylor Trust.
Oxford Town Hall
Category: Music
Tuesday 21 December
Christmas at Christ Church
Stephen Darlington, director
Jean Marsh & Robert Hardy CBE, readers
Take a break from the incessant rush and bustle of shopping, parties and preparations and stop awhile. This evening's event is the start of Christmas for many of the regular audience, a chance to link into the spirit of Christmas through inspirational words and music from across the centuries performed in this stunningly majestic and spiritual of venues. Tickets sell out every year, so do book early.
Tickets £40 £26 £18 £10
Ends 10.15pm
Christ Church Cathedral
Category: General Festivities Music Theatre
