The December 2021 Issue

Eat, shop, learn, and celebrate what North Carolina has to offer this month.

A longtime local crafter is proud of her tiny town for its shops, restaurants, and abundance of Christmas spirit.

At a French-style café in downtown Greensboro, employees with developmental disabilities can shine, and everyone can enjoy a meal prepared with love and care.

We recommend adding North Carolina-grown nuts to this maple-pecan coffee cake — a Christmas morning classic.

This warming bowl of breakfast oats is loaded with flavor and can be made the night before.

Forget the store-bought treat: Spread icing over these warm, homemade tarts and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar to impress children and adults alike.

Bread pudding doesn’t always have to be sweet. This savory version is brimming with Gruyère cheese, eggs, and breakfast sausage.

Let your heart be light: Many of these festive dishes can be made ahead — a bonus gift on Christmas morning.

Cocoa-dusted sugar balls, cream wafers, featherweight butter cookies — these sweet recipes are straight from the land of the TV dinner.

A writer in Greensboro recalls how a favorite relative arrived each December, bearing shirt boxes brimming with old-school gems.

There must have been some magic in that basement workshop in Raleigh: After more than a decade and countless trips to the craft store, a father’s determination brings his handmade gift to life one day.

Make it a Carolina Christmas: From the mountains to the coast, we found our state’s icons — official and honorary — in their best holiday dress.

This season, lace up your skates and take a spin in a winter wonderland.

Each year, the post office in the tiny town of Star holds a contest to determine the design of its holiday postmark, which brings visitors from near and far to Montgomery County to add a bit of Christmas cheer to their mail.

When cultures collided in one family’s Raleigh kitchen, a new food tradition — part Jewish, part Southern Baptist — was born. Two treats served each year for Hanukkah — latkes and sufganiyot, or jelly doughnuts — got updates. The Jewish husband was mesmerized. The Southern wife had a secret.

Deck the halls and hit play on our curated Spotify playlist, which features a merry selection of classic and original holiday tunes by North Carolina artists.

Every generation knows the fizzy anticipation of waiting for Christmas morning — and the lazy warmth of the day that follows. For some North Carolina kids, the joy of finding that Santa brought a hoped-for gift — a model train, a brand-new bicycle, a sled — sparks a lifelong passion.

For members of a model railroad club in Hendersonville, a love of toy trains that started with a simple track beneath the Christmas tree now stretches across western North Carolina.

Seeking a pocket of quiet in the mad dash leading up to Christmas, one family heads west and finds a rink they can skate away on.

A bicycle maker has turned his childhood sense of adventure into a career that lets him share the gift of pedaling through life’s ups and downs.

There’s more to Kernersville’s most famous home than meets the eye. Filled with nooks, trapdoors, and a tiny theater, Körner’s Folly is a Victorian homage to the power of imagination.

In a private showroom in Watauga County, an early trailblazer in online auto sales collects life-size versions of the toy cars of Christmases past.

Growing up in a chilly 1950s household in Lumberton, a prodigy received the gift of music — a beautiful cherrywood piano. The instrument guided him through hardship, triumph, and, ultimately, redemption.

A Randolph County artist brings the joy of the holidays to the classes that she teaches in her cozy paint-and-sip studio near downtown.

The gift of a board game helped move a man to the first square in a career at play.

Torry and Terrence Holt grew up playing football in Gibsonville. Within a few short years, they were stars in the NFL. Today, they spend the holidays together with family and friends in Raleigh, looking back on lives lived with integrity.

In a year of isolation, adults have rediscovered the enduring joy of jigsaw puzzles. A Winston-Salem company creates puzzle scenes that bring North Carolina home for the holidays.

The Olympic dreams of a North Carolina engineer who designs bobsleds for Team USA were born in the Piedmont.

In Warren County, civil rights leader Floyd McKissick lays the foundation for a community built on equality — and although it fails to materialize, his core values live on.

Christmas shopping can be challenging, but back in the first half of the 20th century, North Carolinians got a helpful hint from a most unlikely source.