The Island's Week
The island celebrates quietly and in public at once. Hotel lobbies carry the grandest trees in town, the shops dress their windows for the only retail week that matters here, and the churches fill for carols and midnight services. Dinner reservations are the week's real currency. The restaurants that stay open run two seatings and fill both, so the planning starts weeks out, not days.
The deeper rhythm is arrival. Christmas week is when season residents come back for good, school calendars permitting, and the island's population finds its winter shape. The social season proper waits for January, which is exactly what makes this week precious. The town is full but not yet busy. Our season guide covers the longer arc from here to Easter.
Worth Avenue's Night
The avenue's tree lighting is the island's one genuinely communal evening, a tradition the Worth Avenue Association has kept for decades. This year it falls on Tuesday, December 2. Live entertainment starts at four, a festive procession moves down the avenue, and the 40 foot tree lights at 6:27 by the clock tower end. Come early, park in the garages off Peruvian or Hibiscus, and plan a dinner nearby. The avenue's restaurants treat the night as their season opener.
The evening is also the best open house the island gives itself. The crowd is neighbors rather than tourists, and the windows from Via Mizner to the ocean show what the retail season will carry. Walk the vias after the lighting. They are dressed, lit and nearly empty an hour after the tree goes bright.
Across the Bridge
West Palm Beach answers the avenue's restraint with spectacle. Holiday in Paradise opens on the Great Lawn at 100 North Clematis on Thursday, December 4. The centerpiece is the waterfront's famous sand tree, a 35 foot sculpture the city bills at 700 tons. Nightly light and music shows run through the month, with sculptors working in the early weeks, and the lights hold through December 31. It is free, it is genuinely good, and children prefer it to anything on the island by a wide margin.
The Flagler Museum keeps the historic register, dressing the Grand Hall around its tree in the Gilded Age manner through Christmas. Between the museum, the waterfront and the avenue, the holiday geography spans one bridge and ten minutes. That compactness is the whole point of basing a family in Palm Beach or West Palm Beach for the holidays.
Planning the Week
Worth Avenue Association and City of West Palm Beach announcements
Book the restaurants when you book the flights. Reserve Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners by Thanksgiving, earlier for parties above six. The events calendar fills in around the anchors as churches, hotels and the clubs publish. Our month by month calendar tracks the full December slate as it dates.
Bottom Line
Christmas here is two celebrations ten minutes apart: the avenue's candlelit restraint and the waterfront's joyful spectacle, with the hotels and the museum holding the middle. Anchor the week on the two lightings, book the dinners absurdly early, and leave the afternoons unplanned. The island does its own programming in late December, and the best of it is a walk at golden hour.
For families planning the holiday: arrive before the avenue lights on December 2 and stay through the fireworks. The week between is the calmest the island ever feels, and the best audition a future season resident will ever get.
Dates are the organizers' published 2026 announcements as of October 12, 2026. The Worth Avenue Association announced the tree lighting and the City of West Palm Beach announced Holiday in Paradise. Programs without published 2026 dates are described by their standing tradition. This guide updates in place as December programs publish.
The sand tree's height and tonnage follow the city's current published figures.
Worth Avenue Association and Florida Weekly's published announcement.
City of West Palm Beach and The Palm Beaches event listings.
Our season guide and social calendar.
