VanDusen Botanical Garden
Filed Under Contests | November 23, 2009
** This contest is now closed – winners will be contacted via email**
This contest runs from November 23rd to December 7th, 2009.
VanDusen Botanical Garden’s Festival of Lights is a holiday tradition not to be missed and they’re giving away four sets of family passes (valued at $26 each) to yoyomama readers to their opening night this December 11th.
Each year VanDusen Botanical Garden lights up the night for the holidays. They use over 1.4 million lights to transform the Gardens into a dazzling winter wonderland including the enthralling Dancing Lights on Livingstone Lake, mischievous Scandinavian Christmas gnomes Svend and Jens, the Gingerbread Wood and Make-a-Wish Candle Shrine. This year they’ve added a Sparkling Spruce just on the edge of the Centre Court where you can use the controls in the sleigh to design your own light show with the trees as your canvas. And don’t forget to visit Santa, who will be holding court in his living room every evening starting at 5:30 from December 11th to 24th. The Festival of Lights runs from December 11th to January 3rd from 4:30 pm to 9 pm nightly, except on December 24th when the Garden is closed. The Garden is located at 5251 Oak Street at West 37th Avenue.
So how can you win tickets to this glittering holiday must-visit? Just use the comment functionality on this contest on the yoyomama site to share your favourite family holiday tradition. And as soon as the content ends keep an eye on your inbox as we’ll need to award and distribute these tickets asap.
It’s easy to comment on any of our contests, but you do it on yoyomama.ca not in our daily emails. All you need to do is add your comment at the bottom of the contest after the share and enjoy buttons. Please note: To be eligible for this contest you must use valid email address as that is how we’ll contact the winner.
88 Responses to “VanDusen Botanical Garden”
Leave a Comment
Let us know what you think or share your great finds with us so we can share them with other Vancouver mothers!
We’ve started a holiday tradition of taking the Christmas train in Stanley Park. We’ve gone with another family for the past three years and go out for dinner afterwards.
We live close to our families so as we walk in the early AM to “whosever” turn it is for xmas morning, my husband and I share a bottle of champagne as we push the stroller with our little one…perfect to get anyone in the holiday spirit!
Every Christmas Eve we go to my sister in laws house and celebrate with my husband’s family. Once the festivities come to an end we pile into the car and drive from Vancouver to Maple Ridge, to my brother’s house so, we can wake up with my family. We usually arrive late but, almost everyone is still up. I Love Christmas:) We have scaled the gift giving part back, to just pulling one name from a hat and giving a $30 gift. So, it isn’t about the gifts, it is about everyone making an effort to get together and the food, of course:)
Well, before our little boy came along we used to spend our Christmas mornings sleeping in, making a yummy breakfast and generally taking our time opening gifts. Now that has all changed! We still enjoy our Christmas mornings here at our house as a family but the pace is a bit more frantic! Our son is only 2 and we are creating our family traditions as we go along. Last year we visited the Festival of Lights in Dundarave. We continue to get pet photos with Santa for our dog but now we include the whole family in the picture!
We are lucky and get to enjoy double the fun during the holidays. Christmas eve is spent with the Swedish in-laws enjoying meatballs & herring while we wait for Tomten to come. Then the next morning it is champagne and OJ with my side of the family while we open our stockings from Santa and watch the children’s faces light up. Then there is the Stanley Park Train, egg nog, Christmas carols……ahhh love the whole season.
The past few years we started the tradition of picking out and cutting down our Christmas tree from the farm on Steveston Hwy on a snowy day (the weathers been cooperative every year). The boys love running through the trees play HideNSeek in the snow. Everyone gets a turn at the saw to cut the tree down. They have Hot Apple Cider and Hotdogs to cook over the fire after getting the tree.
Our family tradition is a big tree trimming party the first weekend in June.
We have discovered a westcoast way to celebrate Christmas Eve. We head down to Granville Island in the morning for a stroll and coffee. While we are there we visit the Lobster Man for fresh crab. My daughter picks out her favourites (they are very accomodating through this exercise!) and they clean them for us to take home. That night we share a lovely crab feast dinner complete with fresh bread, sauvignon blanc, salad and something yummy for desert.
Right now I’m thinking how to create our own family traditions, what Christmas really means to our family,what are our values are around itand how do I make it magical. My son is three so it’s all about Santa and what presents he wants for Christmas. Apart from the gifts though, I wonder what can we give back to others this time of year and how do I make that a tradition for us. Some thoughts I would like to incorporate as yearly traditions: sponsoring a family in need in our community, going through toys to give away, making christmas crafts, feeding the animals outside. Being grateful for what we have and telling people what they mean to us. Making a mitten clothes line and have others as well donate new mittens to hang on the line then give away the whole collection to others in need before Christmas. There is something so magical about Christmas, the music the, warmth, the smells, the decorations, being with people we love, putting our differences aside and giving of ourselves. I hope to make lasting traditions based on those ideas, how ever idealistic some of them maybe…I am going to try!
One of our Christmas traditions is on Christmas morning we are only allowed to open one present before breakfast. This would drive me nuts when I was a child because my parents would insist on a full sit down breakfast (eg homemade waffles, bacon and eggs etc) and I would try to get everyone to eat cereal. It was also the one day of the year that the kids would willingly jump up and do all the breakfast dishes so that we could quickly go back to opening presents. :)
We had many traditions for Christmas growing up including a large gathering of friends on Christmas Eve complete with more food & drink than you could imagine.
Stocking traditions included mandarin oranges, silver dollars and lifesaver books.
Things have certainly changed now that my parents are no longer around but we look forward to creating new traditions with our two young kids.
Sue
Our holiday traditions always seem to be centred around food. We think about it, talk about it, plan for it and of course share it with our loved ones. Our love for food is quite sinful and decadent as you can see by how we race to the table. The traditional corn beefed hash for brunch at our brother in law’s house, dinner at the in laws with ‘shorty’ potatoes, orange marmalade ham and of course the turkey with savory stuffing are simply a few of the traditional items the table is laden with. And of course there are the smallest ones in the lower mainland in need, so, a donation of formula, diapers or funds to “Basics for Babies” is a small way to share the love :)
My extended family gets together for a low key party. It’s a great chance to catch up with family I don’t get to see often.
Our family tradition, we have a gathering with all our family and friends. We have a nice dinner together, play games and open presents. A nice time of the year to spend with loved ones!
Our family tradition has always been to tour all of the wonderful Christmas lights. We have not yet been to the Vandusen lights, and with a new baby who LOVES lights, Vandusen would be the start of another wonderful holiday tradition.
Funnily enough, our ‘new’ family tradition (that we started a few years ago when I was pregnant with my son) is to go to the Festival of Lights! It puts us all in the festive spirit :)
I want to make going to the gardens to see the lights and santa a family tradition!!!!
Some of our traditions include touring the Xmas lights, new pajamas on Xmas eve and of course, turkey dinner!
Christmas dinner is always with my husband’s family, the tradition itself is for all of us to be together as a family no matter who’s house it may be at. What I’m enjoying even more is reading about others traditions, who knows we may adopt a couple ourselves. Love the idea of new pj’s on xmas eve. btw – my daughter thinks Santa lives in the Vandusen greenhouse (when he’s not up at the North Pole)! That’s the only place she’s ever known him to be, and he’s there every year – ha ha!!
Christmas eve fondue with my parents started when my brother and I were quite young. Now it includes our kids and significant others as well.
Christmas day involves 2 family get togethers: one for Christmas “lunch” with over 50 guests (I am from a large Italian family) than a smaller dinner and dessert with my partner’s family. Family is the most important thing this time of year, and this is a value that we pass on to our children
i spend hours tying cotton threads to all the shiny candies in a tin of quality street. our two boys (3 & 5) help hang them from the christmas tree and then they get to choose one every day as we wait for christmas to finally arrive.
Our (completely hedonistic and absolutley fabulous) new family Christmas tradition is to buy a complete, cooked and ready to go turkey dinner (with all the trimmings) from a local hotel. We pick it all up at around 4pm and bring it home and feast away. This allows us ALL to enjoy the day without some people (always the mothers) being completely spent and so exhausted they cannot enjoy the dinner. Now that i have a toddler and am pregnant with #2 and my mom is getting up there in years it gives us all a chance to have a relaxed and truly stress free Christmas Day. What a present that is!
Christmas for us is all about family, friends, traditions, food and most important – the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ! Growing up, all things related to Christmas revolved around the church… today, like so many of our friends, we’ve drifted from that somwhat. Now with our own kids, we realize the significant and positive impact… the values, traditons and gifts the the church gave us – and are trying to bring this into the “new world order” in our own familay and in our own way.
Every year we tour the Xmas lights on Trinity Street while drinking hot chocolate, knowing that our donations go towards keeping Harbourview daycare running! Childcare is much needed in Vancouver and this is a fun & delicious little something we can all do to keep ‘em going.
One tradition we have is the Christmasing of the house on Dec 1. No matter what day the 1st falls on, our older daughter (and maybe this year the younger one too) is there to help decorate the tree, windows, tables and mantles with lights and items that celebrate the season, especially her collection of nativity scenes. We have not yet been to VanDusen, though we drive through neighbourhoods in our town and love that immensely, so I know VanDusen would be an incredible thrill.
We have been taking our children to the Stanley Park Christmas Train and Display for about 6 years now.
And even before our kids were born, my hubby and I would go. There is such a magical and romantic feeling when you’re in amongst all the lights and beauty!
One of the most important celebrations in our family! Celebration of a birth of Jesus Christ.
Nothing more magical and sense tempting than a candle light,”tamjan” and choir singing Christmas songs early Christmas morning at the Europe’s middle century church.
Merry Christmas to all yoyomama staff. Thanks for helping us stay informed.
Sanja
Vancouver on November 24th, 2009
My favourite traditions is the huge party my in-laws give on Christmas Eve, with all the cousins and second-cousins and third-cousins, and extended-family friends. There are people at the party who are 40 years old and have never done anything else on Christmas Eve except come to this event. Every year we joke that the guests will all just show up, even without invitations. Santa comes and everyone sits on his lap. “The Kids” all get a small gift – “The Kids” are now 40!
My fave holiday tradition is baking with my mom. Some of my girlfriends have joined in too and it is the kick off to the season for me. Now with little ones, we have also started going got the Stanley Park Christmas train with friends and their kids and then our for dinner after!
Holidays always mean spending time with friends and family and “food” is always part of the socialization ( and given as gifts, too)we share, so baking treats to share is huge. Now that I have kids they share in the baking of goodies (the eldest but this year our 2 year old will be right in it!) and we have seasonal music playing and festive drinks while we bake.
When we decorate the tree my mom makes home made eggnog, we turn up the christmas music and everyone pitches in. Dad pulls out the camera which I try to avoid getting in front of (which is easier now that my little angels steal the show). My Parents have kept every decoration since the year they were married, including our self made er…masterpieces? Every decoration has a memory or story or good laugh to go with it, sometimes even some tears. It’s a very special time.
Van Dusen Gardens have been a holiday tradition in my family since i was a kid, now i get to share it with mine and hopefully theirs :) The trees are so beautiful and well taken care of, Vancouverites are so fortunate to have this right here in the middle of the city!
we have been a few years in a row to the festival of lights, we love it and our kids are also amazed by the beauty of it. It also was the first time at the festival of lights that our son got to meet Santa and listen to his stories, this has become our family tradition, that and just cozying up by the tree with some hot chocolate!
My favorite holiday tradition as a child was called “Kris Kringling.” We picked a family and “kringled” them throughout the season – this meant leaving holiday surprises on their doorstep, ringing the doorbell and then driving away quicky. We never told them it was us and it left me with an incredible feeling of magic. I plan to start this tradition with my family (our children are 6 and 4) this year!
We buy a new family ornament for the Christmas tree every year!
We go for a walk down to the beach every christmas morning. It is usally empty and feels very special. It helps make the day a little quiter and more relaxed.
Every Christmas Eve we gather at my parents house with all the extended family for a big party, then Christmas morning we have a calm slow Christmas morning with the kids and just enjoy our day, taking a walk in the afternoon with the family before dinner
I am just starting my family traditions and last year we attended the Festival of Lights at VanDusen and loved it! It is now a must do every year. The singing Elves are a highlight. I love to spend time outdoor and enjoying finding things to do close to home.
VanDusen Gardens is one of my favourite places in Vancouver. Once you pass through the gates, you are presented with gorgeous gardens, expansive ponds, quiet turtles, fairy tunnels (as my girls call them), massive expanses of green lawn and, of course, the fabulous maze. Christmas is also an incredible time to visit, with bunches of purple lights dangling from trees like heavy wysteria blossoms and pathways lit with magical, sparkling lights. Try visiting santa (while listening to live choral music) at VanDusen over the holidays, too – it sure beats the mall!
We would love to make this a yearly tradition with our new little one! He already loves lights so this would be an amazing sight for him and us as well! What a beautiful world to step into and admire!
For a few years our family had a tradition of going cross-country skiing on Christmas eve and then to Horseshoe Bay for fish n’ chips. Things are different now that we have a one year old. Looking forward to starting some traditions of our own.
One of our Christmas traditions is to pick a child from the “angel tree” to buy a gift for. I have been doing this since before I had children of my own and now I have my kids get involved in making Christmas a little bit better for someone else as well.
We’ve lived in many countries due to my husband’s work and so we’ve collected Christmas ornaments from those places. As we still live far from family and old friends, we’ve asked them to send us ornaments chosen by them. Our tree tells a story of our journey so far and reminds us of those who are close to our hearts.
To keep ourselves occupied over the Christmas period we’ve started a tradition of doing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. We’ve saved them all and I have grand designs of starting a completed jigsaw puzzle wall one day when we have a home of our own!
We have a young family where Christmas hasn’t been understood yet, except for a day to play with all the wrapping paper and gift bags. However, my own Christmas traditions include baking Christmas cookies with my girlfriends – a day long tradition! A new Christmas CD every year to play while trimming the tree and mandarin oranges in the stocking toe are other other traditions that I have and will be passing on with my kids too. Such great memories and they bring the warm and fuzzies every year!
This is only our 2nd Christmas with our baby and we’re expecting our 2nd baby in Dec, so we’re going to make Stanley Park’s Bright Nights train our tradition.
Nothing starts our holiday season better than when our 4 year old screams “CHRISTMAS LIGHTS” out at the top of his lungs when he spots the first sign of decorations.
Our family is young, so we’re just starting our family traditions. But our traditions are pretty standard (because they’re so good!). Pancake breakfast on Christmas morning, followed in the evening by a big ol’ turkey dinner!
A week before Christmas, my two young children help me to bake gingerbread cookies in different festive shapes to hang on our Christmas tree. They look lovely!
Every Christmas Day I pick up my elderly Mother and drive to my brothers house for a special dinner with close family. We don’t buy presents for each other anymore because the family has grown so huge that it would be a great expense to get all the presents and not to mention the excess needless spending. So we enjoy the company of relatives and then head home to our cozy warm homes.
Christmas eve begins with hors d’oeuvres for dinner and lots of nibblings and sweets! Afterwards we celebrate by opening gifts and expressing our appreciation for one another. Then we head off to church for the candlelight service! And we still wake up to stockings in the morning!
Christmas is my favourite time of year! We have many traditions around this special time. Getting together with family is the most important of all though. We used to all go to my Aunt’s house for Christmas Eve but as the family has expanded this tradition has disappeared and I am trying to keep the family get-together by hosting a breakfast or dinner on a different, less busy day.
One of our favourite holiday traditions is to open one present before we go to bed on Christmas Eve and it’s always a new pair of PJ’s for everyone. Then we can head off to bed in our cozy, warm, new PJ’s for the night.
Well, my family is in NB, and my husbands family is in Mexico. We have been going to Mexico, but that is not happening this year. So this year we will spend Christmas day with all of our friends who do not have family in Vancouver. This year our daughter will be almost 2, so it’s going to be very fun. We will enjoy a mexican style meal and mmmm….wine:)
My favorite part about Christmas is boxing day. When the whole family hangs out together in their pjs all day, playing with gifts, reading books by the Christmas tree. There is no schedule, no meals to prepare (just eat leftovers from Christmas day). It is truly glorious time shared with family.
In years to come, it won’t matter whether they (twins) had matching Wiggles guitars, whether they fought like bandits over red versus blue LEGOs, or whether one child got six gifts while the other got five. What they will remember is driving around in their pajamas (that Frosty brought them) to find the best holiday light display, sitting on Santa’s lap and whispering their grandest wishes into his ear, and gobbling down a bowl of ice cream while watching Christmas Eve on Sesame Street—even if one child did have slightly more ice cream in his bowl than the other.
It’s all about food and family. Lots of baking and big dinners together. Love the holidays!
My favourite Christmas tradition is listening to Christmas music. As soon as December is here, the beautiful music lifts our spirits as we wrap presents and drink eggnog. It’s my favourite time of year!
A few Christmases ago, my husband and I started the Christmas tradition of donating gifts to needy families through the Christmas Bureau in our community. It is an important way to teach our children about the gift of sharing. The experience is made even more meaningful because we get the opportunity to meet the families when we deliver their presents each Christmas.
We are a new family and our little one is already helping to creating new Christmas traditions! Santa Claus visits, Stanley Park train, Festival of lights, and playing in the snow are all on “his” list!
Every Christmas Eve, we head to my in-laws, they make a real wood fire (they only do it this night of the year) and we sit with no TV, no phones, no computer, no turkey, no oven timer, no fuss, no muss, and just spend time as a family. We live in such a busy world and the opportunity to be with loved ones, really be with them, makes our holidays so bright.
As a kid, I used to love Christmas: the preparations, the tree, the family reunions, and the gifts of course… But lately, as we both live far from our families, we almost ended up hating Christmas. But like my husband says “last year was the last one he was able not to like” as our little sweetie was born in March, therefore this year will be her first Christmas. We have already planned a photos session and a trip to spend a few days with the grandparents… yes, this Christmas will be special for sure!
Buying the Christmas tree together. We love to look at trees until we find the perfect one. Bring it home and decorate it, but the best part is when we turn the lights for the first time. That makes my son so happy.
We had many holiday traditions while living in NYC. However, when we moved back to Vancouver we quickly started new ones, including going to see the lighs at VanDusen every year. We took our first born when he was less than a month old and we’ll take him (now 4) and his younger sister (2) there again this year. When they were wee they were just mezmerized by the lights, now they are older they enjoy the hot chocolate (mostly warm milk), seeing Santa, and the musical light show.
Our family’s tradition is that we leave out Cookies and milk for Santa, and carrots for the Reindeer on Christmas Eve, and then just before bedtime, we read “The Night Before Christmas”.
We love making Christmas cookies while listening to holiday music!
Our Christmas holiday involves a lot of family get-togethers and eating! Now that we have a 3 yr old son, we get him involved with choosing a Christmas tree and decorating it….although all the decorations seems to all be on the lower half of the tree!
We are a family with two young girls and we are just begining to adopt our own traditions from both sides of the family. Its fun to blend as well as to make out own traditions such as taking a winter picnic to VanDusen and spend the late afternoon enjoying the magic created there.
This year will be the first in 9 years that our family will be together on Christmas in the same city. YA!!
Now with our new addition (the first grandchild too.) we have many new traditions to start.
Our first is having all our close friends over to make Christmas ornaments and decorate gingerbread houses.
My favorite tradition when we where kids was leaving cookies out for Santa. Something I did even when I got older and had to eat the cookies in the morning. (I guess Santa didn’t like my baking!)
With our kids, who are 3 yrs and 15 months, we are having great fun creating new traditions. One of those is to visit Trinity Street to see the lights.
This is a family tradition. We love going every year to see the lights.
We are enjoying creating new traditions as our little family grows. Including the Stanley Park Train, a big hit with our 3year old son.
My husband and I both have our families in town so Christmas day is busy with visiting everyone, so Boxing Day has become a perfect day to sleep in, open gifts to each other, and take a long walk if it’s nice or watch a movie if it is not.
We look forward to the Christmas lights at Park and Tilford gardens. At least 3 times a week, after dinner, we bundle up and grab a coffee/hot chocolate and put reflector lights on the boys (2 1/2 and 5) and let them loose to go around as many times as they want. They love the climbing mice and the glittery rose garden and we love that they tire themselves out and head straight to bed after!
Putting up the tree and playing Christmas music and now that we have a 20 month old we will probably do the STanley Park train and lights again and again! She loved it last year and i’m sure even more this one!
Going to Stanley Park to see the lights on the train was very enjoyable! I can’ t wait to take my daughter to VanDusen Gardens to view the lights at night!
This year will be ther first year my daughter and I will be celebrating Christmas alone so I’d like to start a tradition for the two of us of going to the gardens together. It will be that something special for us and an event we can look forward to every year together. Our other tradition so far is to make hot chocolate and watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer together.
We load up car, put on the christmas music & drive 40 minutes to a tree farm in Langley to pick out our tree. Warm hot chocolate awaits us after we load up the tree onto our roof. It has become a tradition that we started before we had children & now is part of their lives.
Since my daughter was born in 2005, my favourite holiday traditions have been getting her a special ornament for her own tiny tree (when she was 2, I got her two dragonflies) and celebrating her French-Canadian heritage with tourtiere and bouche de Noel on Christmas Eve.
There are so many favoured traditions! But I love the annual watching of all my favourite Christmas movies. They never get boring!
We have many favorites, but what I enjoy the most is hanging out with my boys in our pj’s,while drinking hot chocolate and reading christmas stories.
Our Christmas traditions usually revolve around food. We have a hotpot dinner Christmas eve with my side of the family, and then a turkey dinner on Christmas with his side of the family. I always look forward to these two dinners and now our little one is old enough to join in the festive eating!
Our Christmas tradition is going to Christmas Eve Mass followed by a night feast (reveillon) with family/friends. Each child is allowed one gift to open then scoot to bed so Santa can arrive :-)
Our family tradition includes going to a Christmas eve service at church and then opening presents on Christmas eve. We save our stockings for Christmas morning.
We have a few traditions we started when we had Aidan and we hope to make more now that we have his brother Quinlan as well. Every year on Christmas Eve we head up to Maplewood Farms in North Vancouver. It isn’t very crowded, the animals are out and we get outside for some family time. It is a nice daytime activity.
This is a family tradition of ours. seeing the lights and sipping hot chocolate. We look forward to this chilly night e wry holiday season.
For the holiday tradition – My husband and I volunteer at the Food Bank in December, help sorting out the donated foods. Since the addition of our daughter almost 2 years ago, we have been attending the Breakfast with Santa with her and some friends at Canada Place. On christmas day, we usually have a big family dinner at our place. It’s a joyful time!
Putting up the Christmas tree is always a special night. Our ornaments have been collected over the years and each has a story. Once its up we start our Christmas reading with the first installment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Letters from Father Christmas – from the same copy that I used to read every Christmas with my mom.
One of our holiday family traditions is to make French
toast on Xmas morning and top it with blueberries! Yum
Our Christmas tradition is not with family but with friends who live in all corners of the lower mainland. None of us have family that live near us, so we’ve become family to one another. This began about 14 years ago when we were all in our early 20′s and were roommates. It’s difficult to get together during the year but we try and make Christmas time special. We try and meet up at least twice for holiday fun, first at the Roger’s Santa Claus Parade (we’ve only missed once) and then proceed to someone’s house for beverages, appies and of course the annual watching of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Then we select a night to meet up for the Stanley Park Train. This year we will be adding in a skate at Robson Square which we hope will stick to the tradition. It’s become a time of enjoying one another’s company, not about gifts but about just being with one another. Now we have our own children and it’s become a tradition to them as well. Merry Christmas Everyone!