By Charly SHELTON

The holidays are full of laughter and cheer, giving and gathering, eggnog and gingerbread. And each year, local theme parks pull out all the stops to bring holiday cheer to those who visit them. This week, we take a look at the granddaddy of them all – Disneyland Resort. For its 61st year of celebrating the season in the park, it has gone to new lengths to amaze, entice and include guests from all walks of life in the holiday celebrations.

In 1955, the Christmas celebrations included a 15-foot tree at the hub where the Walt Disney statue currently is, wreaths hung around the park, new banners in green and red to hang from the light posts and a Christmas-themed overlay for the Disneyland Stage where choir groups sang Christmas carols to small audiences. Now 61 years later, the celebration is a bit bigger. The tree in Town Square stands 60-feet tall and holds more than 1,800 ornaments and 70,000 lights. Around the park, garlands, wreaths and twinkle lights cover every available ledge. The Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise and It’s A Small World get holiday overlays while World of Color, the daytime parade and nighttime fireworks are replaced outright with holiday versions. And that little choir show on the Disneyland Stage has now been moved to take over the bottom half of Main Street, U.S.A., with the train station becoming the stage for the singers and the gigantic, ticket holding audience filling in around the tree and down Main Street. Suffice it to say, this is the big one. It is the biggest, most elaborate and most classic holiday celebration in L.A., if not the country. And this year got even better when it expanded the holidays at Disneyland to include holidays other than Christmas.

It has always been kind of assumed that “holidays” is the more politically correct way to say it, but it’s still about Christmas. Santa Claus, a manger, reindeer, wreaths and garlands, stars, candy canes, ribbons and paper, even snowflakes and snowmen, all stem from and make reference to the Western European traditions in celebrating the Christian holiday. But where are the dreidels of Hanukkah? Where is the kinara of Kwanzaa? Where is the Yule log of pagan tradition? For the first time that I can find record of, Disneyland has included these traditions in its new holiday offering, Festival of Holidays at Disney California Adventure.

Spinning off its model for the wildly successful Food and Wine Festival in the spring, the Festival of Holidays invites guests to come learn about year-end holiday traditions from around the world and taste the specialty foods served at these holiday gatherings. For a per-piece fee, guests can visit one of 15 locations along the walkway between Buena Vista St. and Goofy’s Sky School coaster to collect info cards about holiday traditions, sample foods, drink cocktails and make crafts relating to each holiday. They will find the tamales of Navidad, the Spanish and Latin American celebration from Christmas through Three Kings Day; the roast lamb and sweet falafel donuts of Kwanzaa, as celebrated in North Africa; the chicken and potato curry of Diwali; the Hindu, Sikh, Jain and Buddhist festival of lights; the Reuben potato smash – a twist on the latkes of Hanukkah; the classic flavors of Christmas in the West – mulled wine, spiced cider, peppermint bark and fudge. This is a new and interesting take on celebrating the holidays by actually including other holidays. And while it can get pricey – fast – with sample size plates going from $4.25 to $8 for food and $9 to $13.25 for cocktails or beer flights, this is still a great way to learn about other cultures while filling your tummy with some pretty great tastes.

Elsewhere in the park, the Haunted Mansion Holiday has a new addition – Sally. This now classic attraction-take-over based on Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” has been bringing ghoulish cheer to the Haunted Mansion from Halloween to Christmas since 2001. Now in its 15th year, it is finally time for Sally to step into the mansion fully. She has been in the attraction since the beginning as the little waving doll at the end, telling guests to “Hurry Back!” But now, she gets a life-sized audio-animatronic in the graveyard scene, right across from her beloved Jack Skellington, leaning on a tombstone and pining for him. It’s a nice little addition that helps keep the attraction overlay fresh and new after all these years.

Disneyland is the place to be this holiday season. Whether you’re in the mood for food, fun holiday rides or a cultural experience, you’ll find it here. I recommend doing it all at once – get some candy cane beignets to eat while in line for It’s A Small World Holiday or Jingle Cruise, and read the souvenir cards collected from the Festival of Holidays to learn about the lanterns of Diwali – the akash kandil. And be sure to get plenty of selfies in front of the castle or Christmas tree for that last-minute holiday card to send to the family.

Next week, we will take a look at the other major theme park’s holiday offering – Grinchmas at Universal Studios Hollywood. And if you missed last week, be sure to check CVWeekly.com for coverage of Queen Mary’s Chill.

  Charly Shelton