Tue 11/29 @ 4PM

Once upon a time, moms and grandmothers bundled the kids up and took them downtown to a fancy hotel tea room or a department store restaurant, decorated for the holidays, places such as Marshall Fields Walnut Room in Chicago with its giant tree rising up through a central atrium. (It’s still open today even though Fields is now Macy’s, unlike the long-gone department store restaurants that once graced Cleveland department stores).

Some of that ambiance is being created at the Intercontinental Hotel on Carnegie on the Cleveland Clinic campus where a tree-lighting ceremony will take place and a gingerbread house display will debut on Tuesday November 29. Live carolers will greet a festival backdrop for the lighting of the tree in the lobby which will be adorned with more than 7,500 ornaments. There’ll be a Kwanzaa Kinara and a Chanukkah Menorah as well.

Mulled wine, hot chocolate and holiday treats will be available and there’ll be a sleigh for taking photos to remember the occasion. The tree and other displays will be on view through the month of December.