EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays
EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays is an annual winter festival at EPCOT at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, celebrating the holiday traditions of the eleven nations of World Showcase. Held from late November to December 30 and included with regular admission, it is the fourth and shortest of EPCOT's seasonal festivals, joining the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts, the EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival and the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. Its programme combines costumed storytellers, seasonal food booths called Holiday Kitchens, and the Candlelight Processional, a large-scale retelling of the Christmas story that long predates the festival itself.
History
The festival is the renamed successor to Holidays Around the World, the holiday celebration EPCOT introduced in 1996.[1] For two decades that event presented the storytellers, decorations and food of the season around World Showcase without formal festival status. Its centrepiece in the early years was the Lights of Winter, a canopy of synchronised lights over the bridge between Future World and World Showcase, which was retired after 2009 and never replaced.
The decisive change came in 2016, when Disney added Holiday Kitchens — full food booths on the Food & Wine model — to the final edition held under the Holidays Around the World name.[2] The following year Disney promoted the event to a full festival. The first EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays ran from November 19 to December 30, 2017, with fifteen Holiday Kitchens and a new scavenger hunt, Chip and Dale's Christmas Tree Spree.[3] It has been held annually since, in recent years typically beginning the day after Thanksgiving.
Candlelight Processional
The festival's headline entertainment is also its oldest. The Candlelight Processional began at Disneyland in 1958 and came to Walt Disney World in 1971, where it was performed at Magic Kingdom. In 1994, as its popularity outgrew that format, it moved to EPCOT's America Gardens Theatre at The American Adventure pavilion and expanded to multiple performances nightly across the season.[4]
Each performance pairs a celebrity narrator, who reads the biblical Christmas story, with a massed choir of Disney cast members and community singers, the Voices of Liberty a cappella group and a 50-piece live orchestra. Performances are given three times nightly throughout the festival. Standby seating is included with admission, but demand is heavy, and dining packages guaranteeing a seat at a chosen performance are sold at EPCOT restaurants. The Processional was cancelled in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and returned the following year.[5]
Storytellers and entertainment
Around World Showcase, Holiday Storytellers appear in each pavilion through the day to present that country's seasonal customs in short performances mixing storytelling, music and comedy.[6] The line-up varies by year but characteristically includes Father Christmas in the United Kingdom, Père Noël in France, the witch La Befana in Italy, a Hanukkah storyteller between the Morocco and France pavilions, and presenters covering traditions including Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year and the mischievous gnome Julenissen in Norway, whose story is told by the storyteller Sigrid.
Other regular entertainment includes JOYFUL! A Celebration of the Season, a vocal ensemble performing gospel, rhythm and blues and holiday music, and Santa Claus meet-and-greets. Until its retirement in 2019, the park's night-time show IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth closed with a holiday finale during the season; its successors have continued the practice of a seasonal tag or holiday presentation.
Holiday Kitchens
The Holiday Kitchens are the festival's equivalent of the Food & Wine Global Marketplaces: kiosks around World Showcase serving small plates and drinks drawn from the country or tradition they represent, such as the Bavaria Holiday Kitchen in the Germany pavilion and the L'Chaim! Holiday Kitchen devoted to Hanukkah dishes. Recent editions have fielded more than twenty kitchens. A recurring companion activity is the Holiday Cookie Stroll, in which guests collect stamps in the festival passport for designated cookies at participating kitchens and redeem a completed passport for a complimentary treat.[7]
See also
- EPCOT
- EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival
- EPCOT International Festival of the Arts
- EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival
- Disney Festival of Holidays