A Museum of Science and Industry Date Day is great any time, but something magical happens every year from November through early January when the Grand Rotunda is turned into a labyrinth of Christmas trees and other seasonal decorations.   This is the Christmas Around the World and Holidays of Light extravaganza that started in 1942 when a single tree made up the exhibit.  Today, you can wander through over 50 trees and displays that represent holiday traditions from around the world.  The exhibit also features periodic indoor, snow flurries, live holiday performances on the weekends and a four-story Grand Tree in the center of the rotunda.  For us, visiting the museum is a holiday tradition that we rarely miss.

This year, we picked a Friday on early December for our annual Christmas visit.  We arrived at the museum around 10:30am to find the usual long lines to purchase tickets.  Luckily, we are members and get to avoid the lines all together.  If you are not a member, we strongly recommend getting you tickets online as it will save you a little money and a lot of time.

Christmas Around the World

Upon entering the museum proper, we headed straight for the trees.  Coming up the escalator into the Grand Rotunda, we got our first glimpse of the huge tree in the center, as well as some of the smaller trees on display.  The initial sight is enough to put the Scroogiest of us in a festive mood and make the Grinchiest of our hearts swell.  We happened to arrive during one of the regularly scheduled snow flurries (are they really bubbles?) and that just added to the experience.  After taking the obligatory picture of the Grand Tree, which was spectacular, we began our wandering through the rest of the trees and displays.

Over the next 90 minutes or so, we saw every tree and every display.  Sometimes the crowds were annoying, but mostly everyone was in a good mood and having fun.  We each had our own favorites and were more than happy to argue about whose were better.  Our favorites included trees from Poland and Japan.

One thing we did notice, was that some of the tree were not exactly decorated to represent the Christmas traditions of the countries or regions they represented.  For example: the Belgian tree had waffles and pictures of the King and Queen.  We’ve lived in Brussels and can’t remember seeing a tree like this.  Likewise, the tree from England was a Where’s Waldo of traditional English holidays and didn’t have much to do with Christmas.  We thought the whole idea of Christmas Around the World was to show how other cultures celebrate Christmas?

Unfortunately, almost lost amongst the trees are displays from cultures that have significant holidays around the same time but are sometimes forgotten by the masses.  We saw a Kwanza display and one dedicated to Hanukkah that the crowds seemed to bypass.  A visit to the museum website reveals a list of all the trees, but we couldn’t find a comparable one of the non-tree displays.

Robot Revolution

One of the sometimes-unpleasant things about a Date Day is that we are often under a time constraint.  Whether it’s picking up the kids, making dinner or other commitments, we know when we must be home.  Once we finished with the trees, we had enough time to visit some of our museum favorites like The Great Train Story and Jollyball.  Since we had planned ahead, we also got to visit the Robot Revolution exhibit, which presents a fascinating, and sometimes scary, view into how robots and artificial intelligence may change out future.

As we left the museum, it was once again time to answer the Date Day question of Where shall we eat lunch?  We decided to head south, towards home, and do the usual googling, yelping and texting of friends along the way.  After much ado, we settled on The Cottage on Dixie, a farm-to-table restaurant in Homewood Illinois that we had heard good things about but had not visited.