Photo courtesy of Shervin Lainez

The music of the holiday season ranges from classic to contemporary, bringing joy to any generation. Lindsey Stirling was not only a fan of holiday music, but was creating a joyful career of her own in the music industry when she decided to release Warmer in the Winter. It debuted at number one on Billboard’s Classical Crossover Chart, and was the catalyst for her annual holiday tour.

Since 2017, Stirling has taken her holiday songs on the road and 2025 is no different. The Snow Waltz Tour combines the most loved songs from Warmer in the Winter and her second holiday album, Snow Waltz, for a magical evening.

The audience at a recent tour stop in Waukegan, Ill. were left in awe as Stirling, her dancers and her band took turns at showcasing their talents. Aerial performances, cozy backdrops and multiple costume changes transformed the Genesee Theatre into a winter wonderland.

For fans that follow Stirling on social media, they know that her costumes throughout the night are usually handmade. The royal blue number was made from scraps. The traditional Huipil and Falda was recently upgraded after her recent tour in Mexico. The final red ensemble was carefully rhinestoned to perfection. The variety of wardrobe changes also applied to the dancers, each with corresponding attire. It was not only a cohesive story being told through fashion, but elevated the stage as a glittering prop.

It was clear that the songs chosen for the setlist, as well as the moments in between, were her unique brand of storytelling. A pirate element made a surprise appearance to the show, a nod to her upcoming Master of Tides cruise. Two of her dancers (and later, her stage manager and drummer) performed as the Haynes sisters, this time a nod to Stirling’s favorite holiday film, White Christmas. And why not have Halloween on Christmas, just like Jack and Sally intended, with skull masks and a waltz through the crowd.

Holiday traditions may include watching classic films, attending a tree lighting ceremony, going ice skating or making the perfect cup of hot cocoa. For many, their holiday tradition has involved a Lindsey Stirling live performance. The Snow Waltz Tour is every bit magical as intended, and highly recommended to enhance anyone’s holiday cheer.

Graphic created by Lucas Seidel Design

Gather 'round the open fire for Chimneyside Chats - a monthly feature with holiday stories from our favorite artists. See what's in their stockings this year as they reminisce on holiday memories, share their favorite recipe and more! Here's what country powerhouse Jacquie Roar had to say:

Graphic created by Lucas Seidel Design

Gather 'round the open fire for Chimneyside Chats - a monthly feature with holiday stories from our favorite artists. See what's in their stockings this year as they reminisce on holiday memories, share their favorite recipe and more! Here's what indie pop artist Dani Felt had to say:

Graphic created by Lucas Seidel Design

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and thanks for the opportunity to share a lovely recipe. We, Jupe Jupe, love the holiday traditions this time of year, primarily because they involve gatherings with great company, music, beverages and food. However, like so many folks on the darker end of the fashion street, holiday gatherings can be a conundrum. Does wearing all black dampen the mood or send the message we’ve got no spirit? Of course not. And if you follow our recipe below, you’ll find that you can also not lose your sense of fashion or nail polish just because Grandpa is coming with a Danish Kringle. Our blue velvet red beans and rice will let you keep your colors in the food and off your body.

Before you get started, open a bottle of wine. Put on music. I’d suggest including Jupe Jupe’s “I Saw Three Ships” to your holiday mix, just like Black is the New AP Style did on their Chimneyside Chats playlist below. Note: The beans should soak in salted water for at least eight hours by the time you’ve had a glass of wine and started your playlist.

Graphic created by Lucas Seidel Design

There are many debates among Christmas celebrants about The Tree - how tall it should be, how early in the autumn to put it up, how to decorate it, when to take it down. But no debate is more fiery, more fundamental to the whole enterprise, than the debate of Real Tree vs. Artificial Tree.

I grew up firmly in the Real Tree tribe, so much so that I never questioned the supremacy of that position - never even saw it as a position a person held. It was just the way things were done. Our family wasn’t particularly hardcore on the spectrum of Christmas traditions, but this one held up across many years. Every November we would go to a patch of forest in the mountains outside my hometown in Colorado and harvest a beautiful fir tree (I assume legally). When that got too hectic, we’d go to a local gardening store called Spencer’s and peruse their vast lot for the perfectly imperfect tree.

The house would be filled with the smell of evergreen. We’d change the water in the little basin in the bottom of the stand. We’d sweep up the needles, which eventually would overwhelm the living room. We’d wonder (sometimes aloud) about whether the old strings of lights with their tangibly hot bulbs would ever pose a fire risk. The rites and rituals of the Real Tree tribe.

And yet here I sit, years later, the unapologetic owner of an Artificial Tree made of five discrete pieces to be carefully extracted from their XXL storage duffel and assembled the day after Thanksgiving. No needles falling, no fire hazards posed by the built-in lights, no debate about which way the perfectly symmetrical cone needs to face. No evergreen smell, unless from douglas fir candles (I wouldn’t wish a spill of fake pine scent oil on my worst enemy). No trees harmed in the making of our celebration - unless you want to spin up an environmental impact analysis and have that debate.

How did I get here? Like a frog boiled slowly, I got cooked without being fully aware. I married someone from the Artificial Tree tribe, whose wisdom and pragmatism slowly chipped away at my Real Tree dogma. We got a tiny fake tree when we weren’t going to have an official tree because of travel. Then, one day, we got a huge one at Costco, where we get everything. We just bought it. Despite myself, I must admit that it is beautiful, and as effective at conjuring the Christmas Spirit as any hand-sawed, weirdly shaped forest tree.

But my cognitive dissonance, my decades as part of the Real Tree tribe, needed just a bit more help. So, as I do in situations where I’m struggling to rationalize a decision I’ve made, I wrote a song. It’s called “o Xmas tree” - an adaptation of the classic O Tannenbaum - and it’s about our plastic tree. If the joy of this holiday hinges on whether the tree is “Real” - or for that matter, whether any particular facet of Christmas is “Real” - we’re already in trouble. So I’m going to take a deep breath of (artificial but very convincing) fir tree aroma, and just not worry about it.

The mother of all artificial trees

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My sister and I started a tradition on Christmas Day where we go to the local bird sanctuary to feed all the winter birds and animals. We started this for a multitude of reasons, mainly because we love animals, and before music I had plans to be a zoologist. Also because both of our parents are only children and we don't have many people to hang out with over the holidays.

Feeding songbirds at the Lynde Shore Conservation Area

Graphic created by Lucas Seidel Design

I have Polish roots on my mom’s side, and one of our family’s Christmas traditions involves baking a braided Polish bread known as a chałka. One year, when my mom and her sisters were in high school, my grandpa (who has now passed away and for whom I wrote a song entitled “Under the Pines”) put them in charge of taking the bread out of the oven once it had cooked. He had spent hours lovingly kneading and braiding it, and it was very important to him.

When my mom and her sisters lost track of time and realized too late that the bread had overcooked and was as hard as a rock, they were horrified! My aunt then had the brilliant and creative idea of putting a bow on it and hanging it on the front door as a decoration. When my grandpa came home, he asked his daughters, “Is that Christmas decoration what I think it is??”

Needless to say, the braided bread (which they subsequently lacquered) hung on my grandparents’ front door over the holidays for close to 50 years. A few years back, I decided to attempt to bake my own chałka in memory of my grandpa, and I was astonished to learn upon arriving at my grandma’s that year that the lacquered bread had crumbled a few minutes before my arrival; I arrived to see my cousin picking up its pieces. I have taken this as a sign that I should continue the family tradition of baking a chałka!

Braiding bread, a Polish tradition called  Chałka

Graphic created by Lucas Seidel Design

Sometimes I feel as if I’ve been visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, walking me through the winter memories of my childhood. Not to say that I’m Scrooge - I would describe this wintery haunting as a pleasant, sought out one.

A tradition of my past and present is baking. I have a particularly longstanding relationship with cookies. As a little girl, my mother and grandmother shared my grandfather’s chocolate chip cookie recipe with me. Towards the end of his life, he had begun to notate some recipes, and this one became mine to carry forward. I took the recipe into my own hands, and have made them every year since.

Over the years, I’ve set more and more ambitious holiday baking challenges for myself - sometimes following along with The Great British Bake Off, sometimes adopting a new recipe to weave into my collection. Each December, I spend a week crafting cookie boxes filled with:

• The classic chocolate chip, my family’s heirloom
• Sugar cookies shaped like moons and stars, a little constellation of sweetness
• Chocolate snowballs (which I never get quite right)
• Bourbon-dipped gingerbread, a recent addition

Graphic created by Lucas Seidel Design

Gather 'round the open fire for Chimneyside Chats - a monthly feature with holiday stories from our favorite artists. See what's in their stockings this year as they reminisce on holiday memories, share their favorite recipe and more! Here's what folk/roots singer-songwriter and pianist Jeffery Straker had to say:

I perform an annual holiday show on the Canadian prairies and this year is the ninth year we’ll bring it to the stage. It started with a single night in a small 60-seat room in Regina, Saskatchewan and has grown to be a 10-show tour this year. The hometown show is now two nights in a 715-seat theatre. I call it, ‘A Very Prairie Christmas’, and along with a band I perform covers of the festive classics, a few obscure holiday tunes as well as a smattering of my own original seasonal songs. Between songs I banter with the audience and tell some funny stories of my Christmases over the years. Most of these stories have a prairie theme to them.

Riffing on the prairie mood of the show, a few years ago I decided to do a giveaway from the stage just for some fun gift-giving, and the audience loved it. That gift at each show was a “dainty tray”. “Dainty Tray” is the name used on the Canadian prairies for a dessert platter with a variety of squares, cookies, cakes, tarts, bars and the like - but they’re all cut or portioned ‘small’ hence the moniker ‘dainty’. Typically the baking is arranged on a platter that has a paper doily on it for some ‘presentation’. My partner of five years, Michael, is an incredible baker and on my social channels I’ve shared photos of some of the many cakes and baked treats he’s made for me over the years. Those posts always get lots of interactions. So at these shows when we shared that we’d be giving away a dainty tray baked by Michael, the audience loved it; you could hear a collective gasp each night.

We’ll be giving away a dainty tray at each of the 10 shows on the tour this year once again. It’s almost like The Price is Right when the winner runs up to the stage with the excitement of receiving… The Dainty Tray.

If you want to prepare a prairie dainty tray for a party you’re hosting, as a gift to give someone or just to have around your house for when guests drop in, here are some options I’d recommend choosing from. Note that the greater the selection, the more impressive it always seems to be for guests. Also, there’s no standard plate size for a dainty tray. You can make one on a small dessert sized plate (a mini dainty tray) and give it away as a gift, or you can make one on a platter the size of a pizza pan if you’ve got a lot of guests arriving.

(In my opinion the first seven items are a must for a proper prairie Dainty Tray)

• Butter tarts
• Shortbread cookies
• Gingerbread cookies
• Nanaimo bars
• Fudge or chocolate bark
• Confetti squares
• Fruit cake