It’s that time of year when you get home, plop yourself down on the couch, and start scrolling through your phone while a Hallmark Christmas movie plays in the background. And what you might miss while ignoring the screen are the fantastic holiday settings many of them inhabit, from classic old homes to charming town squares. While most of the towns in those movies are fictional, dozens of small towns around America look just as magical in the winter. Here are 11 that feel just like the movies.
Photo: Kevin M. Walsh/Shutterstock
11 US Small Towns That Could Star in a Hallmark Christmas Movie
Cooperstown, New York
Photo: This Is Cooperstown
In central New York, about an hour west of Albany, Cooperstown’s small-town streets always seem a little surreal when you realize every storefront is a baseball memorabilia shop, but when it’s covered in a soft blanket of snow you’ll hardly notice. That transformation begins in earnest with Santa and Mrs. Claus arriving in Pioneer Park in late November, followed by the tree-lighting that kicks off the season. The Farmers’ Museum’s Candlelight Evening remains the anchor event, where roughly 150 carolers line the pathways and horse-drawn sleighs move through the grounds as the historic village is lit by lanterns.
Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin
You do not need a passport to find a proper European-style holiday market. Roughly an hour north of Milwaukee, Elkhart Lake’s Old World Christmas Market takes place each December under a large heated tent at The Osthoff Resort, where the event has been held since 1998. The village has deep German-American roots: the Osthoff family themselves were German entrepreneurs who built a summer resort here in 1886, and northern-German hoteliers followed in the early twentieth century, bringing Central European food and entertainments to the lakeside community.
At the market you’ll find German holiday dishes — glühwein, apple strudel, potato pancakes, dumplings — as well as hand-blown ornaments, carved woodwork, amber and silver jewelry, chocolates, and other giftable items. You can book ornament-making workshops, step onto a horse-drawn carriage, or reserve breakfast with Santa and one of his live reindeer. The market runs December 5–14, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM daily.
Frostburg, Maryland
Photo: Allegany County Tourism
About the closest you’re getting to living in the land of Buddy the Elf is Frostburg, where every year the residents turn themselves into elves for the annual Storybook Holiday. The town sits in western Maryland near the Allegheny Front, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Baltimore, and the festival fills the brick-lined streets of this small college community. It begins with Breakfast with the Elves at the historic Hotel Gunter, then moves into the parade and Elf Olympics on Main Street. This year’s featured author, Kristin Kladstrup of The Gingerbread Pirates, will conduct a signing mid-afternoon, and the day ends with a classic holiday film at the art-deco Palace Theatre.
Leavenworth, Washington
Photo: Mark A Lee/Shutterstock
Leavenworth is arguably America’s most Christmas-obsessed small town. Set in the Cascade Mountains about two hours east of Seattle, it transforms into a glowing Alpine scene with over half a million lights, nutcrackers on nearly every corner, mulled-wine huts, and the long-running Village of Lights festival. The festivities start in late November and carry through December, when the streets fill with carolers, outdoor stalls, and families crowding the town square for the nightly light displays. Even after the holiday rush, the lights remain up into winter, giving January visitors the same scene with far fewer people.
McAndenville, North Carolina
Photo: digidreamgrafix/Shutterstock
Nicknaming yourself Christmastown, USA sets expectations pretty high, but this little town of roughly 900 people still meets them every December. McAdenville sits just west of Charlotte, circling a small man-made lake where the annual light display is concentrated, and more than 250 evergreens and over 100 homes are covered in upward of half a million lights. The display runs nightly from December 1 through December 26 and the long-running Yule Log Parade — a tradition dating back to 1949 — and the opening-night tree-lighting still packs the streets.
What began as a company-town project in the 1950s has grown into a regional ritual, with hundreds of thousands of visitors filing through each season. Traffic can stack up on peak nights, so many people park on the edges of town and walk the loop instead. A few newer taprooms and cafés in the restored mill buildings stay open during the season, too, giving you the option to warm up before heading back out to see the lights ripple across the lake.
Mandeville, Louisiana
Photo: Visit The Northshore
If you’re going to gorge yourself on holiday food this season, there’s nowhere better to do it than the Louisiana bayou. Mandeville sits on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, about forty minutes from New Orleans, and its Mandeville’s Sips of the Season event brings more than 35 restaurants and bars onto Girod Street with tasting stations that require a commemorative mug for the libation stops. The next day, Saturday, December 6, 2025, the Winter on the Water Parade & Festival kicks off at 3:00 PM with a boat parade along the lake, followed by performances, face-painting, and pictures with Santa at the Trailhead through the evening. Once you’ve woken from the food coma, stroll Lakeshore Drive where century-old live oaks are draped in lights, and watch decorated boat floats glide past downtown with Santa bringing up the rear.
Monterey, California
Photo: Visit Monterey
Christmas-movie settings don’t have to be limited to red-brick main streets and grand old Victorians. Monterey sits on California’s central coast, about a two-hour drive south of San Francisco, and each December the city stages its annual Christmas in the Adobes event, when more than 20 historic adobes in Old Monterey open their doors from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM, decorated with luminarias, music, and holiday refreshments. Many of these buildings aren’t normally open to the public, so it becomes a walking tour of some of the region’s earliest architecture. You can also catch “Christmas on the water,” when locals outfit their boats for the Brighten the Brighten the Harbor Lighted Boat Parade, floating past downtown lit up for the holidays. The mix of coastal air and festive lights makes this one of coastal California’s more surprising winter-holiday scenes.
New Castle, Delaware
Photo: Moonloop
Not that you’d want to live in 19th-century London, per se, but if you could handle the chamber pots flying out the window, it might be fun to live like A Christmas Carol for a couple of days. New Castle sits along the Delaware River just south of Wilmington, and each December locals and visitors step into that era at the annual Dickens Experiences, where you can attend a Victorian ball, enjoy high tea, and wander among costumed characters before a live performance of A Christmas Carol. If colonial America holds more appeal, jump on the Spirit of Christmas tour, where you can walk through historic homes and churches that are over two hundred years old and decked out in holiday décor.
Pacific Grove, California
Photo: Visit Monterey
A California beach town isn’t typically the kind of place you’d expect to spend the holidays cozied up in a Victorian bed and breakfast, but this small town might do Christmas better than anywhere in the Golden State. Pacific Grove’s seven historic B&Bs cover their fireplace mantles in bows and gift-wrap their staircases for the annual Christmas at the Inns event, which takes place on December 9 from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM and includes live music and small bites as you move from house to house. The season starts earlier with the town’s tree-lighting at Jewell Park on December 1 at 4:30 PM, a local tradition that draws families from around the peninsula.
If you can pull yourself away from that level of coziness, check out Candy Cane Lane, a residential street (Morse Drive) where neighbors try to outdo each other for the most over-the-top Christmas decorations. The display typically runs nightly from early December through Christmas from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM, and it stays entirely resident-run, which is part of why it feels so personal.
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Photo: James Kirkikis/Shutterstock
There’s a pretty good reason Stockbridge looks so quintessentially Christmas: it quite literally is something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It’s the Stockbridge from Rockwell’s famous “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas,” so while plenty of New England towns go all out for the holidays, this one stands out. The best time to visit is the first full weekend of December, when the annual Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas festival takes over Main Street.
That weekend brings guided and self-guided tours of historic homes — including the studio where Rockwell worked — along with the Sunday recreation of the painting, when traffic is closed and vintage cars line the street for the photo-ready tableau. Nearby Naumkeag adds to the season with its Winterlights display, which usually runs from late November through early January, making it an easy add-on if you’re staying into the evening.
Stowe, Vermont
Photo: Kevin M. Walsh/Shutterstock
Stowe’s center looks straight out of early-winter New England once December hits, with white lights on the church steeple, wreaths on nearly every storefront, and the ridgeline visible beyond the village. The town sits in north-central Vermont, about forty minutes east of Burlington, and its main event — A Traditional Christmas in Stowe — returns December 5–7, 2025, bringing out most of the community. The weekend includes a lantern parade for kids, a tree-lighting on the village green, wagon rides through town, a holiday bazaar set up in the local school, and chances to meet Santa and Mrs. Claus. Carolers move between businesses, and Main Street stays busy well into the evening.
Spruce Peak, a few miles up the road, also runs its own winter programming during the same stretch. Lights cover the base area, there’s ice-skating on the small outdoor rink, and fireworks cap at least one night of the weekend. Many visitors combine the two — time in the village followed by the events at the mountain — since the schedules line up across the same early-December weekend. 