Winter Festival
Step out of the cold and let us welcome you into the warmth of our Winter Festival | From October 2022 to January 2023
Join us to celebrate Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Lunar New Year and learn how they are marked at home.
Many communities have a cultural celebration that punctuates the winter months. Winter Festival brings these together for everyone to enjoy.
Discover stunning light installations and decorations, new stories and displays about winter at home and through time. Come together for a programme of talks, creative sessions, supper clubs and live performances. Winter Festival offers moments of joy, thoughtfulness and intrigue to make the best of the season.
This year, the Winter Festival will also embrace sustainability and we will be reducing our environmental impact and reusing as much as possible. We will make every effort to create a sustainable festival and to promote sustainable celebrations to our visitors.
Scroll down to discover what's on
What's on
Beat the winter blues and create space for joy and wellbeing. Find out about Winter Festival events and installations happening across the Museum.
Winter Past
Explore our iconic Rooms Through Time, restyled to reveal how winter has changed London homes through the last 400 years. Find out what migration has brought to the city’s homes across the season, from décor to food, to keeping warm, entertained and being with those who matter to us.
Light Up the Museum
Experience beautiful, colourful winter lights installations, piercing the darkness of the season with luminescent joy. Festooning our garden spaces, it is free to view and enjoy throughout Winter Festival - within the Museum and from outside.
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Celebrating Diwali
Join us for a week of celebrating the festival of lights, launching Saturday 22 October with a multi-generational family day of making, dancing and delectable things to eat. Across the week, visitors can also experience Nutkhut's The Night Before Diwali, plus artwork, crafts, stories, objects and curated displays.
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Winter Decorations
Join us to decorate the Museum as a place of warmth, wonder, colour and joy for all this winter. Experience our Family Area Winter Wonderland, Christmas trees, and DIY workshops to come. We’ve committed to making our Winter Festival as sustainable as possible by reusing decorations, upcycling materials and recyclable materials.
Hanukkah
Dive into the history of Hanukkah and how families in East London marked it. We'll be bringing some of the traditions, foods, objects, music and stories to life with craft workshops, an intimate Sephardi Jewish Hanukkah supper club, and a Family Celebration Day on Sunday 18 December.
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Green Lunar New Year
Green Lunar New Year promises a day of inspiring talks, creative workshops, film screenings, a maker’s market and live performances, reflecting on climate action through an ESEA lens. On Saturday 28 January 2023, you're invited to leap like a rabbit and prowl like a cat with renewed vigour and love for our fragile world.
Find out moreRelated events
Sephardi Hanukkah Supper Club
Free Tea Fridays
Behind the Door
Winter Festival supports Behind the Door, the Museum’s campaign for change, working to raise awareness of and tackle hidden homelessness among women.
Hidden homelessness refers most commonly to women – often working, often with children to care for – who will do whatever they can do avoid sleeping rough. This means sleeping on friends’ couches or in spare rooms for short periods, moving between hostels and sometimes poorly-maintained or unsafe emergency accommodation.
To tackle this, Behind the Door partners with London Homeless Collective, which brings together over 25 charities working directly with those experiencing homelessness across London.
Every ticket sold throughout the Winter Festival programme and every donation made to the Museum helps us support those experiencing homelessness at the toughest time of the year.
Light Up the Museum by Joe Humphrys for Museum of the Home