We all have holiday traditions. Dressing the kids up to go see Cincinnati Ballet’s “Nutcracker” at Music Hall. Drinking hot cocoa while walking through the zoo’s Festival of Lights.
Some of our regional favorites may not be available during this pandemic year. No “Christmas Carol” at Playhouse at the Park. No WinterFest. Some will be very different, and socially distant.
Even though these activities are enjoyed generation after generation, they can and do evolve.
Here is the history of some of Cincinnati’s most cherished holiday traditions.
Christmas tree at Fountain Square
Cincinnati’s first community tree at Fountain Square was put up in 1913. The 45-foot-tall tree decked out in 2,000 electric lights was sponsored by the Cincinnati Women’s Club. The city took over the tradition a few years later.
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Before that, crowds used to gather on Fountain Square to watch the Christmas pantomimes performed on the balcony of the Mabley & Carew department store at the northeast corner of Fifth and Vine streets. The shows ran from 1890 to 1923, usually family fare like “Little Red Riding Hood,” with an appearance from Santa Claus.
Mabley & Carew commissioned Cincinnati artist Joseph Henry Sharp to capture the scene in the painting “Fountain Square Pantomime” in 1892. The painting is on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
Over the years, the square has hosted the lighting of the menorah for Hanukkah, ice skating and the Cincideutsch Christkindlmarkt, a German Christmas market.
Downtown shopping
Starting at Thanksgiving, folks used to dress in their Sunday best for the annual pilgrimage downtown for holiday shopping at the many local department stores.
Festive lights and store displays were used to attract customers. The most popular were the windows at Shillito’s on Seventh Street between Race and Elm, where, from 1955 to 1985, animated mechanical tableaus showed elves at work sorting letters or making toys. Pogue’s, meanwhile, had Pogie and Patter, animatronic talking reindeer.
Live nativity scene
The Crib of the Nativity in the front yard of the Krohn Conservatory in Eden Park features live lambs and sheep, goats, a donkey and a cow, along with figures of Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. The crèche has been a gift from Western & Southern Financial Group since 1939, when it was originally set in Lytle Park.
During World War II, the nativity was moved to Union Terminal, where it offered spiritual inspiration for troops and their families. The display moved to Eden Park in 1967 when Lytle Park was shrunk during the construction of Interstate 71.
Holiday trains
The model train display that became a beloved local tradition started in the lobby of the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. building at Fourth and Main streets in 1946. The toy train set was a replica of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad line, built as a traveling exhibit, that found a new home with CG&E.
Generations of kids of all ages have created memories visiting the miniature town and mountain-scape where 60 engines and 300 rail cars zip along 1,000 feet of track.
In 2011, Duke Energy donated the treasured trains to the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, where they are part of Holiday Junction.
The Boar’s Head
Since 1940, Christ Church Cathedral on Fourth Street, Downtown, has held the Boar’s Head and Yule Festival on the weekend after Christmas. The religious festival marking the end of Christmastide dates to the year 1340 in Oxford, England. A choir and a cast of more than 250 performers in 14th-century costumes enact a Yuletide pageant and procession presenting the glad tidings of the Christmas season.
Christmas lights
Cincinnati loves shiny lights. Several organizations offer elaborate lighting displays all over the region. PNC Festival of Lights at Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden has been around since 1983, plus there are festive light shows at Coney Island, Sharon Woods and the Christmas Ranch in Morrow, Ohio.
One tradition has endured against all odds: Zapf’s Christmas Display, a gloriously garish lit-up house at 2032 Galbraith Road in North College Hill.
Bill Zapf started decorating his home in twinkling lights and illuminated plastic Santas back in 1970 and became something of a neighborhood legend. Zapf died in 2008, but his family has continued to keep the lights glowing year after year.
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