The Top 8 Holiday Retreats

A holiday away from home can become a magical and memorable excursion. Learn about special spots that do Christmas right; see our list of traditional and historic hotels and inns, large and small, located throughout the nation. These eight holiday retreats go all out, with Christmas trees everywhere, gingerbread galore, carols, and of course, Santa.

At the Jekyll Island Club, where Rockefellers and Pulitzers once had fun, you and the kids can construct a gingerbread house, listen to a bagpiper play Christmas carols, and stroll beneath oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. A special attraction is the Dickens Feast, where a troupe of actors, portraying characters from A Christmas Carol, wander the dining room.

You and the kids may demand a peppermint pig for future holidays after a visit to The Berry Manor Inn in Rockland, where an old holiday tradition continues to thrive. In Victorian times, after Christmas dinner, guests would take a hammer to a pink candy peppermint pig that symbolized health, happiness, and prosperity. It was thought that smashing a candy version would bring luck and fortune to all in the coming year. At The Berry Manor, each guest receives a pig to smash, gently or otherwise.

Shortly after Thanksgiving until New Year's Day, the twelfth annual Twelve Days of Christmas Celebration at The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill provides guests with a multitude of activities, including ornament classes, a Nutcracker tea, and a visit with Santa. The centerpiece of the celebration is a ten-ton sand sculpture that re-creates the first verse of "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

Score major points with tween granddaughters by taking them to The View Point Inn overlooking the Columbia River Gorge, about 22 miles outside Portland. Why? The site is the setting of the prom scene in the 2008 movie Twilight. Invite all vampire-romance fans to a holiday tea that takes place each weekend from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day in the Inn's Crown Point Dining Room.

Skytop Lodge Resort in Skytop has been the scene of wonderful goings-on at Christmas since 1928; through the years, little has changed. The most impressive jaw-dropping attraction is a 12-foot-high gingerbread house that you can walk through. Made from more than 1,000 pounds of gingerbread, 200 pounds of icing, and 100 pounds of candy decorations, it will inspire you to sign up for a class in the art of decorating a gingerbread house, a standard holiday offering at Skytop.

The Inn at Christmas Place in Pigeon Forge isn’t quite as old or historic as the others described here — it's only three years old — but true to its name, the Inn does its year-round Christmas right. No matter if you stay at the 145-room property in December or July, the common areas are decorated with evergreen wreaths, holly, and poinsettias, and you can even have a Christmas tree in your room. Santa drops by for photographs, breakfast, and evening sing-alongs.

You'll get as much Christmas as you can take at the Homestead Resort in Midway, with decorated Christmas trees in every room and five fireplaces blazing with roaring fires in the common areas. That's just indoors. You and the kids can spend the entire holiday outdoors taking sleigh rides, going on a snowshoe scavenger hunt, cross-country skiing, and building a snow cave. A traditional holiday buffet on Christmas Day rounds out the offerings.

If the kids are budding singers, they’ll appreciate the Wassail dinner concerts at the Rittenhouse Inn in Bayfield. The Rittenhouse Chamber Singers have been performing at the Inn for 33 years under the baton of innkeeper Jerry Phillips. While guests savor a five-course Christmas dinner, the professional musicians present a variety of traditional holiday tunes.