At 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 6, the ice opens on Fenton Square. That is 29 days before Cary's official tree lighting at Downtown Cary Park. By the time the Town's tree goes up on Dec. 5, Fenton will have been skating for a month, two shopping centers will have lit their trees, and the lantern festival at Koka Booth Amphitheatre will be two weeks into its run.
So Cary's holidays come in waves rather than on one big night. The privately run centers go first, in November. The Town's own program takes over downtown after Thanksgiving and fills the same few blocks of Academy Street on two Saturdays in a row. The November events are at Fenton, Waverly Place and Koka Booth. The December ones are on Academy Street.
| Date | What | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Fri., Nov. 6 | Skate the Square opens | Fenton Square, 21 Fenton Main Street |
| Sat., Nov. 14 | The GRL Market, 11 a.m.–3 p.m. | Waverly Place |
| Fri., Nov. 20 | Waverly Tree Lighting, 5–9 p.m. | Waverly Place |
| Sat., Nov. 21 | Light the Square, 3–7 p.m. | Fenton |
| Sat., Nov. 21 | NC Chinese Lantern Festival opens | Koka Booth Amphitheatre |
| Wed., Nov. 25 | Downtown holiday decorations go up | Downtown Cary |
| Sat., Dec. 5 | Tree Lighting Celebration, 9 a.m.–8 p.m. | Downtown Cary Park |
| Sat., Dec. 12 | Cary Jaycees Christmas Parade, 2–4 p.m. | E. Chatham Street to S. Academy Street |
The first wave starts on the ice at Fenton
Skate the Square runs at Fenton Square by Paragon Theaters, 21 Fenton Main Street, from Nov. 6, 2026 into February 2027. General admission is $18 plus tax and fees. A season pass costs $90 plus tax and fees, so it pays for itself on the fifth visit.
The rink's ticketing page lists these hours:
- Monday through Friday, 3 to 9 p.m.
- Saturday, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Sunday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Sessions last 75 minutes, and skate rental is included. Fenton's event page says daily hours vary and points skaters to that ticket link. The two pages also give different last days, Feb. 7 on the event page and Feb. 8 on the ticketing page, so check before planning a skate at the very end of the season.
Three Thursday DJ nights break up the weekday schedule in December: Après Ski on Dec. 3, Y2K on Ice on Dec. 10 and Holiday Hits on Dec. 17.
Fenton also has a new stop for after the rink this year. Sweet Paris Crêperie & Café opened at 1 Fenton Main St., Suite 190, and held its grand opening on Saturday, Sept. 19, according to an announcement on RestaurantNews.com. It is the first holiday season with crêpes a short walk from the ice. Fenton is still growing: The News & Observer reported that The Pagemore Hotel at Fenton is scheduled to open in 2027, with Barouk, an Eastern Mediterranean restaurant, planned inside.
Nov. 20 and 21 put three openings on two nights
The rink has early November mostly to itself. Waverly Place's GRL Market, a market of women-owned brands, runs Saturday, Nov. 14, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The weekend before Thanksgiving is where the calendar gets crowded.
Friday, Nov. 20. Waverly Place lights its tree from 5 to 9 p.m. Live music comes from The Embers featuring Craig Woolard, along with free Santa photos and children's crafts. With free Santa photos and a four-hour window, this is the easier of the two tree lightings that weekend for families with young children.
Saturday, Nov. 21. Two things start on the same afternoon in different parts of town. Fenton's Light the Square, which Fenton calls its annual tree-lighting event, runs 3 to 7 p.m. It has a Christmas market, outdoor skating and a live show starting at 6 p.m. That same evening, the NC Chinese Lantern Festival opens at Koka Booth Amphitheatre, 8003 Regency Parkway, for its eleventh year.
The lantern festival runs until early January. The Town of Cary's event listing says it runs Nov. 21, 2026 through Jan. 10, 2027, open daily from 6 to 10 p.m., closed Christmas Day, with holiday hours that may vary. It describes all-new displays built by Chinese artisans, each made of hundreds of pieces and lit by thousands of LEDs, plus nightly cultural arts performances on the main stage. Tickets are sold through Booth Amphitheatre.
Light the Square ends at 7 p.m. and the lanterns are lit from 6, so the two events overlap by an hour. The festival runs seven weeks, though, so there's no need to see it on opening night. It works just as well on a quiet weeknight in December.
Downtown waits for Thanksgiving week
The Town's season starts more quietly. Its downtown holiday decorations go up on Wednesday, Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving. They stay through Jan. 4, 2027, across downtown streets, storefronts and public spaces. The Town's map page lists no display hours.
From that point, the action moves downtown. The decorations are up for a week and a half before the main event, so a walk through downtown in the days after Thanksgiving lets you see the lights without the crowds.
Dec. 5 is the day Downtown Cary Park takes over
The Town's free Tree Lighting Celebration fills Saturday, Dec. 5, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Downtown Cary Park, 327 S. Academy St. Unlike the November tree lightings, it runs all day, with each part in its own spot:
- 9 a.m. to noon. Cary Farmers Holiday Market on East Park Street.
- 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Photos with Santa at The Gathering House.
- Noon to 8 p.m. Holiday Vendor Market on S. Academy Street.
- 2 to 5 p.m. Art Cart at The Nest Pavilion.
- 2 to 6 p.m. Reindeer Games at Park Street Arena. A snowball fight area and face painting at The Nest Pavilion, and a holiday photo backdrop at Frantz Square Plaza.
- 3 to 5:15 p.m. Community performances at the Great Lawn Pavilion.
- 6 p.m. Cary's official Tree Lighting Ceremony on Frantz Square Lawn.
Academy Street from Park Street to Dry Avenue closes from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Dec. 5. If you live or park near that stretch, plan errands around those hours, or come early for the farmers market before the street closes.
Other events fill out the day. Victorian Christmas runs from 2 to 5 p.m. at the Page-Walker Arts & History Center. Two downtown events start that day and run longer: the Gingerbread Competition through Dec. 13 and the Gifting Tree Project through Dec. 20, both listed on the Town's Heart of the Holidays page.
Waverly Place holds its December GRL Market the same day, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. If you're holiday shopping, you can do Waverly's market first and still make the 6 p.m. ceremony downtown.
One week later, the same blocks fill again
The Cary Jaycees host and manage the Christmas Parade on Saturday, Dec. 12, from 2 to 4 p.m. According to the Jaycees' route, it starts at E. Chatham Street and Ward Street and follows E. Chatham to S. Academy. There it turns left and ends at Dry Avenue in front of the Cary Arts Center.
That last stretch of Academy Street is the same one that closes for the tree lighting. So downtown has two Saturday afternoons in a row with crowds on the same few blocks. The parade's two-hour window is much shorter than the tree lighting's eleven-hour closure, but it touches more of the street grid on the way in along E. Chatham.
After Dec. 12, the season calms down again. The decorations stay up until Jan. 4. The lanterns stay lit at Koka Booth until Jan. 10. And the rink at Fenton, the first thing to open, is the last to close, with skating into February. All of these dates come from each organizer's current listing and can change, so check the linked page before you head out.
Every December, our team at Whalen & Co. watches how Cary's busiest holiday blocks match up with the streets our clients live on, since that's part of knowing a neighborhood well. If you're thinking about what your home is worth this season, or wondering how a walkable spot near downtown or Fenton affects its value, we'd be glad to talk it through. Request Your Home Valuation and we'll take a close look at your street.
