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Sofar Sounds: Embrace the Haze with Sierra Nevada (Glass Rooftop)
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Sofar Sounds Secret Venue, Theater District · Boston
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Guides
5 Boston holiday lightings in 2026, including one where Santa arrives by boat
Boston’s holiday lightings start Nov 23 and end with two on Dec 3. Two get Santa and Rudolph, one gets Santa by boat, and the big tree on the Common is a gift from Nova Scotia. Boston’s biggest Christmas tree is a thank-you note. Every year Nova Scotia sends the city a tree for the help Boston rushed north after the 1917 Halifax explosion, and this year’s tree lighting is Thursday, December 3. Before that night, the city’s Parks Department lights up a waterfront trellis, a playground ship and the newly renovated Copley Square. Here are all five, in order, with the times and what to expect at each. The season starts on the North End waterfront, where the Parks Department and the Friends of Christopher Columbus Park light the park’s 260 feet of trellis for the 24th annual trellis lighting. It runs from 5 to 6 p.m. at 110 Atlantic Avenue, next to the Marriott Long Wharf. Santa and Rudolph make an appearance, there’s live music, H.P. Hood pours eggnog, the Marriott brings hot chocolate and cookies, and Joe’s Waterfront serves clam chowder. Since it ends at 6, you have the whole evening left for dinner in the North End, a few blocks away. This one is built for kids. At 5 p.m. the Friends of Martin’s Park and the Parks Department host the fifth annual lighting of the ship at Martin’s Park, 64 Sleeper Street on the Fort Point waterfront. The park’s ship, the beach fencing around it and the pedestrian bridge get wrapped in more than 1,500 feet of blue and white tube lights, and Santa pulls up on the Harborwalk by boat with the Boston Police Harbor Unit. Berklee musicians play holiday songs, and kids can meet the Boston Park Rangers Mounted Unit, climb around a Boston Fire Department truck and make holiday crafts with a local artist. Hood and Caffè Nero bring the holiday drinks. It’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so if family is in town, bring them. Copley Square Park has been under renovation, and this year’s Copley Square Tree Lighting doubles as its grand reopening. It runs from 5 to 6 p.m. at 560 Boylston Street, with guided tours of the renovated square, arts and crafts, Santa and Rudolph, and performances by vocalist Joelle James, the Boston Children’s Chorus and the Symphonic of Emerson College. Once the tree is lit, walk across the street to the Fairmont Copley Plaza for cookies and photos with Santa at 6 p.m. This is the big one. The Boston Common Tree Lighting runs from 6 to 8 p.m. next to the Visitor Information Center at 139 Tremont Street, hosted by Mayor Michelle Wu and the Province of Nova Scotia, with Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston joining her. The tree is the province’s yearly thanks for December 6, 1917, when a munitions ship exploded in Halifax Harbor and, within 24 hours, a train full of supplies and emergency crews left Boston to help. This is the 55th year Nova Scotia has sent Boston a tree. If you want to see it before it glows, it’s due to arrive on the Common by police escort at about 11 a.m. on Tuesday, November 24. Park Street and Boylston are the closest T stops on lighting night. Don’t leave when the Common’s tree comes on. Right after, around 8 p.m., Mayor Wu walks over to the Back Bay with the Friends of the Public Garden to light the trees on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, from Arlington Street all the way to Charlesgate. Neighborhood volunteers ran this display for decades before joining forces with the Friends of the Public Garden in 2022. The walk from the Common through the Public Garden to the start of the Mall takes a few minutes, so you can catch both lightings in one night, then keep walking under the lit trees toward Mass Ave. All five are hosted by the Boston Parks and Recreation Department and held outdoors in public parks, so dress for a cold night on the water or the Common. The two Monday events and the ship lighting each run about an hour, starting at 5 p.m., which makes them easy to fit in after work. December 3 is the crowded one, so get to the Common early if you want to see the stage. The Parks Department answers questions at 617-635-4505, and every event links to its city page above if a date changes for weather.
11 Thanksgiving dinners in Boston from $65 to $165
Turkey stuffed with lobster, live music and a Beacon Hill mansion Thanksgiving dinner in Boston can mean a $65 turkey dinner with an Italian twist or a $165 three-course meal in Back Bay. In between, you can have live music, lobster-stuffed turkey or a seat inside a Beacon Hill mansion. The question is how much you want to spend, and what you want for it. For Thursday, November 26, 2026, these 11 restaurants have announced Thanksgiving dining. We’ve put them in price order so you can compare the menus before choosing a table. Prices are per adult; drinks, supplements, taxes and gratuities can increase the bill. Check the restaurant’s booking terms for the full cost and availability. At the lowest starting price on this list, Via Cannuccia gives turkey a very different treatment. Its Thanksgiving dinner includes breast prepared porchetta-style with porcini mushrooms and Marsala sauce, plus turkey leg wrapped in puff pastry. Spinach and Taleggio flan, gratinéed onions and roasted potatoes complete the plate. The turkey dinner is $65 per person, while Beef Wellington is a $95 alternative. That makes this one to consider if you want something beyond roast turkey with the usual sides, without moving into the $100-plus menus. For $65, Ma Maison offers three courses, with choices that let you build a traditional Thanksgiving meal or a French bistro dinner. Its holiday menu includes escargots, roast turkey with the trimmings, filet mignon medallions with Bordelaise and fries, and wild mushroom risotto. Desserts include pumpkin pie, chocolate mousse and vanilla crème brûlée. Children under 12 eat for half price. Service runs from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Foie gras carries a $10 supplement, and the Grand Marnier soufflé adds $5. An extra $10 over the first two options gets you Sonsie’s three-course Thanksgiving menu, with charred rosemary focaccia for the table. Main courses include apple-cider-brined turkey, dry-aged sirloin, miso-glazed halibut and a vegetarian celery-root Wellington with mushroom duxelles and Parmesan polenta cake. The $75 menu gives a mixed group several directions to go without everyone ordering turkey. Dessert choices include pumpkin Basque cheesecake, molten chocolate cake, warm apple tart and cider doughnut holes with chocolate ganache and caramel. At The Beehive, the $95 three-course dinner comes with live music throughout the day. The holiday menu includes turkey with the trimmings, plus beef, fish and vegetarian options. Children 12 and under have a $29 menu. Thanksgiving dinner runs from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. If you’re eating elsewhere but want to go out afterward, burgers and snacks start after 9 p.m., with the bar open until 11 p.m. Eastern Standard’s Thanksgiving dinner is $98 for three courses, plus tax. The announced menu combines traditional holiday favorites, Eastern Standard classics and seasonal New England dishes. There’s a separate children’s menu, while drinks, extra sides and additions are priced separately. Dietary requests can be discussed in advance at team@easternstandardboston.com. The restaurant is at 775 Beacon Street, rather than its former Kenmore Square location. For $99, The Banks’ three-course Thanksgiving dinner includes lobster-stuffed turkey roulade. Braised short rib is another option for anyone who would rather skip the bird. The optional $55 wine pairing brings the menu-and-pairing total to $154 before other charges. The regular à la carte menu won’t be available on Thanksgiving; this booking is for the holiday prix fixe. Bistro du Midi’s Thanksgiving menu moves into the next price bracket at $110 for three courses. Announced dishes include black-truffle cauliflower soup and roast turkey breast, with service from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. A children’s menu is available on request. The optional wine pairing is $70, bringing dinner with the pairing to $180 before other charges. The regular à la carte menu won’t be served. At $130 for three courses, Hampshire House offers something different from a restaurant reservation: Thanksgiving inside a Beacon Hill mansion normally used for private events. It is opening to the public for the holiday, with reservations required. The menu includes roast turkey with walnut stuffing, beef tenderloin, grilled salmon and vegetarian pumpkin ravioli. Tax, gratuity and beverages are excluded. 75 Chestnut’s Thanksgiving dinner is also $130 for three courses, with turkey, salmon, beef tenderloin and vegetarian pumpkin ravioli among the choices. The turkey plate includes walnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, butternut squash purée, vegetables, giblet gravy and cranberry-orange sauce. Dessert brings apple strudel, pumpkin cheesecake parfait and chocolate torte together. Beverages, tax and gratuity cost extra. The website currently lists Thanksgiving reservations as coming soon. For $5 more than the two $130 menus, Scampo serves four courses. Lydia Shire’s $135 Thanksgiving dinner begins with original Jordan Marsh blueberry muffins and a petite Boston Bibb salad. The next course offers choices including sherried Maine lobster stew and Cinderella pumpkin ravioli with burnt butter, sage and honeycomb brittle. Heritage turkey comes with celery-heart, sausage and golden-raisin stuffing, with beef, pork and fish alternatives also listed. Children 12 and under are $50. Lobster with lobster sabayon carries a $20 supplement. Deuxave’s Thanksgiving dinner is the most expensive starting menu here at $165 per person for three courses. Chef Ryan Zichella’s holiday menu is required that day, with reservations offered from noon to 9 p.m. The restaurant links a sample menu, so review the current dishes before choosing it for your Thanksgiving table. Its regular menu won’t be available, and the three-course requirement applies even if you would normally order something smaller.
Get to know Boston
Order a milkshake in Boston and you might be missing the ice cream
Order a milkshake in Boston at a shop that still keeps the old distinction and you can get exactly what you asked for: milk and flavoring, beaten until it foams. No ice cream. The thicker drink, the one visitors usually mean, is a frappe. Not every counter still bothers. Plenty of menus now use milkshake the way the rest of the country does. The shops that list both drinks are not offering two sizes of the same thing. Those are the last places where a milkshake in Boston and a frappe are different orders. What goes into a milkshake in Boston The traditional local milkshake is milk plus a flavoring, often chocolate syrup, shaken or blended until air gets into it. A frappe adds ice cream. Yankee’s account of the two drinks is useful on a point people skip: the milkshake is not a glass of chocolate milk. Stirring syrup into milk mixes the ingredients. Blending them is what makes it a fountain order. If a menu lists both, look at the prices before treating the cheaper one as a deal. You may be comparing a milk drink with one that has scoops in it. Say “frap” The regional drink is one syllable, rhyming with map. The American Heritage Dictionary records that pronunciation and treats the noun as regional usage, mapping it to Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. Shops in Boston still put it on the board. That entry is a different word from “frappé,” two syllables, which the same dictionary defines as a frozen fruit dessert or a drink poured over shaved ice. The spelling overlap is how visitors end up performing French at a Jamaica Plain counter. A shop owner paid for the lesson Vincent Petryk, who later opened JP Licks, learned the difference as a newcomer from Philadelphia. Boston.com reported that he ordered a milkshake at Bailey’s in the 1970s, saw that it cost half as much as the frappe, and then asked where the ice cream was. Bailey’s is gone. The mix-up is not. The same report found “frappe” in late-nineteenth-century Boston Globe pages attached to chilled and partly frozen drinks, including alcoholic ones, long before it settled on the ice-cream version. Recipes a few years later included cafe frappes and pineapple frappes, sometimes with a scoop of ice cream already in the mix. Boston University food scholars told the paper that regional names for ordinary foods were common before national food media flattened the vocabulary. Megan Elias, who directs BU’s gastronomy program, pointed to a 1920s overlap: Prohibition pushed people toward new places to sit, and electric equipment made ice cream cheaper to produce in volume. Soda fountains did well in that gap. The scholars also said the exact reason this particular word stuck here is not established. There is no inventor to toast and no afternoon when Boston renamed the milkshake. The term showed up in more than one drink, attached itself to the ice-cream one, and stayed. The word is still on the menu JP Licks still lists a regular frappe, an extra-thick frappe, and an espresso frappe, separate from smoothies, frozen coffee, ice-cream sodas, and floats. Extra-thick is a texture, not a citizenship test. In 2023, Mark Parrish, president of Crescent Ridge Dairy in Sharon, told Boston.com his shop still served the ice-cream-free milkshake next to the frappe and asked customers which they wanted. He also said tourists, students, and younger customers increasingly ask for a milkshake. Other counters have given up and will put ice cream in whatever you called it. Rhode Island complicates the map again. In parts of that state, and into southeastern Massachusetts, the ice-cream drink is a cabinet. Same general idea. Different word. This is the same class of local vocabulary as why Bostonians say “wicked.” Get the word wrong and you can still have a conversation. Get this one wrong and you may drink a glass of flavored milk. If the menu says milkshake and you want ice cream in it, ask. You do not need to win the regional argument first.
Weird, Boston squares are almost never squares
Copley Square used to be triangular. Kenmore Square is a pile-up of roads. A small intersection with a memorial sign can be a square too. Boston squares have a lot in common. A reliable shape is not one of those things. The name usually tells you what a place does. People meet there, roads come together there, businesses cluster there, or someone is remembered there. It does not promise four equal sides. If you expect every square to look like an enclosed plaza, you will keep looking for a plaza that was never part of the plan. Some squares also name more than the space in the middle. Tell someone you are meeting in Kenmore and you have named a destination. You have not told them where to stand. Boston squares are places before they’re shapes The city’s Complete Streets guidelines treat streets as public space for people walking, biking, taking transit, and driving. Squares make those competing jobs obvious. Someone wants to cross. Someone wants a bus. Someone wants to sit down without being in either person’s way. A square can be a destination and a route through somewhere else. That is why Boston squares do not always come with a lawn. The meeting point may be the intersection itself, with useful places on the edges. The histories of individual squares are more useful than one origin story for all of them. Copley and Kenmore got to their present forms by different routes. So did a lot of Boston’s streets. Copley really was a triangle According to the city’s landmark report for the Boston Public Library, Copley Square began as a triangular lot at Huntington Avenue, Dartmouth Street, and Boylston Street. Boston bought that parcel in 1883. It bought a second triangle two years later. Huntington Avenue ran between them. The road stayed there until 1968, so the awkward geometry was not a drafting error that lasted a season. Sasaki, which won a 1960s design competition, describes that first park as a shift from a grassy triangle bordered by traffic to a civic plaza next to Trinity Church. A later redesign brought the space level with the sidewalks. A renovation the city marked as complete in 2026 added accessible paths, shaded seating, and work on the fountain. The name survived all of it. A square can keep its identity while the ground plan changes. Kenmore grew around movement Boston University’s history of Kenmore Square describes a commercial crossroads shaped by transport and hotels. Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue meet there. Trolleys and nearby railroads brought people who needed a place to stay. The area was called Governor’s Square before the Kenmore name stuck. The Hotel Kenmore supplied the later name. Hotels, automobile businesses, and the crowds heading to Fenway defined the place, not a formal garden or an enclosed court. That history is a useful check on the idea that every square began as a sitting room someone designed on purpose. Kenmore’s job was getting people somewhere. The identity followed the traffic. Some squares are memorials Boston’s Hero Squares program is even blunter about shape. A Hero Square is a square or intersection dedicated to a service member killed in action. The city says the first one, Dewey Square at South Station, was named in 1898. More than 1,200 have been dedicated since. You do not need a park, a fountain, or four surrounding buildings. Families can apply. Veterans Services works with Transportation and Public Works on the placards. There is a searchable database. The gold star on the sign is reserved for those killed in action. Next time you pass a square that seems to consist of a sign and a crosswalk, read the name. You may be at a memorial, not at a failed attempt to build a plaza.