Holiday House Tours This Weekend and Next

December might as well be called Holiday House Tour month in Massachusetts –  at least two dozen Massachusetts towns are holding holiday house tours over the next two weekends – December 4 and 5 and December 11 and 12.

A few towns have been holding house tours in December for years and now many other towns have jumped on the bandwagon.  I could do with a lot more tours in spring or fall and fewer tours in the cold, busy days of December but what’s a house tour enthusiast to do? 

Fans of house tours probably can’t fit in more than four so how to choose?  I try to find tours with plenty of properties for the price and my preference is for older houses, not new.  I’m not really interested in Christmas decorations – it’s good houses I’m after.

Towns’ tours are sometimes better one year than another so the quality of a tour can be hard to predict.  Some tour organizers don’t like to repeat houses so the pickings get a bit slim after a number of years.  My thought is that a beautiful house is worth a return visit – I won’t complain!

Here are my picks for December 2010 holiday house tours in Massachusetts:

This weekend:

The New Bedford house tour was wonderful the year I went.  New Bedford has a wealth of antique houses and an active preservation group that sponsors the tour. The 19th annual holiday house tour in New Bedford is scheduled for December 4th and 5th.

Neeham is celebrating the 300th anniversary of its founding this year so the Needham Women’s Club chose to focus on historic houses with six dating from 1755 to 1910.  The Needham Historical Holiday House Tour is on Sunday, December 5 from 1 to 4:30 pm.

I give up – there are too many tours to choose from!  Salem is always a good bet, the house tour in Lowell is focusing on Lowell lofts which sounds like fun,  Stockbridge, the 28th annual holiday house tour in Nantucket (that’s tonight!), or the Springfield Tour of Historic Homes all sound like great tours.

Next weekend:

The Newburyport House Tour is celebrating its 17th year and will have ten houses in five towns on tour this year. We’re planning on doing the Newburyport house tour on Saturday, Dec. 11 from 10 am to 4 pm. 

I’ve been on the house tour in Milton several times and it always makes my short list.  There isn’t much info on the website from the sponsors, the Forbes House Museum, but this post has the scoop about the tour scheduled for Sunday, December 12 from 1 to 4 pm.

There are plenty of other house tours -from Western Mass to Cape Cod – you’re sure to find one close to home.  So bundle up and head out on tour!

Here’s the full schedule and links to all the holiday house tours

Categories: Area Events
Tags: Holidays

This entry was posted on Friday, December 3rd, 2010 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Area Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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