Event guide · Tue 03 Nov 2026
Christmas and New Year in New Orleans: the complete guide
A Creole Christmas, done properly: a million lights in the City Park oaks from 27 November, Réveillon dinners through December, caroling in Jackson Square, bonfires on the levee on Christmas Eve, and the fleur-de-lis drop at midnight on the 31st.
New Orleans does Christmas the Creole way: lights in 800-year-old oaks, a feast tradition revived as a month of dinners, candles in Jackson Square and fires on the levee to light Papa Noël's way. The season from the Oaks' opening night to the drop of the fleur-de-lis.
What you need to know, in short: the season runs from Friday 27 November 2026, when Celebration in the Oaks opens in City Park, to the first hours of 2027. The anchors are the Oaks themselves (to 1 January, closed 7, 14, 24 and 31 December), the Réveillon dinner programme through December, Caroling in Jackson Square on Sunday 20 December, the bonfires on the levee on Christmas Eve, and NOLA ChristmasFest from 23 December. Rooms in the French Quarter and the Garden District are the two bases; Réveillon reservations and Oaks tickets are the two bookings to make first.
Celebration in the Oaks: the season's centre
City Park strings more than a million lights through its live oaks, some of them nearly 800 years old, and Celebration in the Oaks has been the park's largest fundraiser and the city's defining Christmas sight since the late 1980s. The 2026 season runs from Friday 27 November to Friday 1 January, in two forms: a two mile driving tour in your own car, and a walking tour through the Botanical Garden, Storyland and Carousel Gardens, where the ticket includes the amusement rides. It closes on 7, 14, 24 and 31 December, and tickets went on sale on 1 November. Walking tour tickets run from $20 on value nights to $35 stand alone, children two and under free. Do the walking tour if you can: the lights are in the trees, and the trees are the point.
Réveillon: the feast that became a season
Réveillon began as the meal Creole families ate after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, a feast at two in the morning to break the fast. French Quarter Festivals revived it as a restaurant tradition, and it now runs through December as prix fixe menus at dozens of the city's dining rooms, old-line Creole and modern alike, at prices the same rooms do not offer in any other month. The full list of participating restaurants and menus is published at holiday.neworleans.com, and the 2026 menus are already landing: Arnaud's, in the French Quarter since 1918, serves its Réveillon at $70 for three courses, with shrimp remoulade, duck à l'orange and a bûche de Noël among the choices, and the BRG group's four houses run from Luke at $81 to Restaurant August at $185 for seven courses. Book the tables you care about in November; the famous rooms fill their December books early, and a Réveillon dinner followed by the Oaks' driving tour is the canonical New Orleans Christmas night.
The Quarter dressed, and caroling in Jackson Square
December is the French Quarter's best-dressed month. The great hotel lobbies compete in decorations, the Roosevelt, the Ritz-Carlton and the Windsor Court above all, and lobby hopping with a drink in hand is a local sport that costs nothing but the drink. On Sunday 20 December the season's oldest fixture fills Jackson Square: Caroling in Jackson Square, hundreds of singers with candles and song sheets in front of St. Louis Cathedral, free and open to anyone who turns up, run by Patio Planters since 1946. Arrive before dark, take a candle at the gate, and let the cathedral do the rest.
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The December stage
The ballet splits two ways: the New Orleans Ballet Theatre dances The Nutcracker at the Orpheum from 12 to 23 December, and Delta Festival Ballet brings its own Nutcracker to the Mahalia Jackson Theater on 19 and 20 December. The Louisiana Philharmonic bookends the month at the Orpheum with Handel's Messiah on 3 December and its Holiday Spectacular on 17 December, the Saenger runs How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Musical, from 15 to 20 December and Lauren Daigle's Christmas tour on 5 and 6 December, and the season's family volume is NOLA ChristmasFest at the Convention Center, from Wednesday 23 December to Saturday 2 January, ice rink and all, tickets $25.
Christmas Eve: bonfires on the levee
On the night of Thursday 24 December, an hour upriver in St. James Parish, the levees along the Mississippi carry a line of bonfires, wooden pyramids stacked for weeks and lit at dusk, to light the way for Papa Noël. It is the region's great Christmas Eve sight: drive out in the late afternoon, eat gumbo at a parish festival ground in Lutcher or Gramercy, watch the fires come on along the river, and be back in the city for midnight Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. There is no ticket and no booking; there is traffic, and it is worth it.
New Year's Eve
The city counts down at Jackson Square, where a giant fleur-de-lis drops at midnight over the riverfront and the fireworks follow over the Mississippi: the free, civic centre of a night that also runs on ticketed parties. On our calendar, Kermit Ruffins plays his New Year's Eve celebration at the Blue Nile on Frenchmen Street, tickets $35, and the National WWII Museum's BB's Stage Door Canteen holds its Dine and Dance New Year's Eve Bash. Then the city's calendar turns on Twelfth Night, 6 January, when Carnival opens; the Christmas guide's last word is the Mardi Gras guide, because in New Orleans the seasons run into each other.
Where to stay
The French Quarter puts Réveillon, the caroling and the riverfront under your feet; the Garden District and Uptown put the streetcar, the parade route's quiet end and the city's prettiest December streets at the door, with the Oaks a streetcar and a walk away. Our where to stay guide compares the areas honestly, hotel by hotel.
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Planning notes
Book in this order: Réveillon tables at the rooms you care about, Oaks tickets for a weekend night, then the room itself. December weather is the city's mildest, cool evenings rather than cold; the bonfires are the one plan that needs a car or a tour seat arranged ahead. Everything dated above is on the events calendar with its own page.
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