Hey DILFs!

I’m sending this on Christmas Eve – when you won’t yet be bored of turkey sandwiches, Home Alone or the in-laws. But trust me: by the weekend, you’ll be mighty glad to have this list ready to deploy.

Until then, have a wonderful day tomorrow, marvel at how many years in a row you’ve heard the cracker joke about Good King Wenceslas’s pizza, and remember that Trivial Pursuit is JUST A GAME.

Merry Christmas!

Jeff xx

PS Results from last week’s poll:

Festive Play Saturdays
Saturday 27 December, 13:30–15:30 (also on Saturday 3 January)
Young V&A, Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA
FREE (drop-in)
Age guidance: suitable for all

We’re all familiar with these arts-and-crafts-based events by now, involving leftover scraps and fabrics from various exhibitions. It often feels like the organisers scheduled them, forgot, and then had a last-minute “oh-bugger-what-can-we-rustle-up” panic when the calendar reminder appeared.

This isn’t a criticism: they’re fantastic because they let your children do messy, creative things in a place that encourages it. If you wanted to produce the same sort of experience at home, you’d need to collect three years’ worth of loo rolls, save the ribbons from every single beautifully wrapped gift you’ve ever received and hem at least 300 pairs of brightly coloured trousers before you could even get close to the range of materials on offer at these things. And then you’d have to clean up.

This weekend, it’s the Young V&A that has the task of putting one on – and the description for it is typically vague. You’ll be joining the Play Champions “to transform yourself through costuming, music and movement”, and you’ll be encouraged to “bring stories and ideas to life in The Stage”. (I don’t know if The Stage is a figurative thing or an actual location in the Young V&A, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.)

It’s all predictably vague, but don’t let that put you off: your kids will have a blast.

Find out more: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/nR5ZQN8L63/festival-play-2025-26

👍️ Viktor Wynd’s Museum of Curiosities is a modern take on the Victorian wunderkammer: a small, densely packed room full of taxidermy, skeletons, oddities, occult bits, questionable artworks and things in jars. It doesn’t try to explain anything or teach you a moral lesson; it simply presents its collection and leaves you to make of it what you will. There’s also an absinthe bar downstairs, in case you’d like your Saturday to feel a little more numb.

Winter Funland
Saturday and Sunday, two timeslots per day (different times each day); available daily until 4 January
Olympia, Grand Hall, Olympia Way, W14 8UX
£37 per person (under-3s free) or £145 per family ticket
Age guidance: suitable for all

This Christmas, London has fully committed to the idea that originality is overrated. We’ve got Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, Whippersnappers Winter Wonderland in Dulwich, Wundrful World Of Christmas by London Bridge, and now Winter Funland in Olympia.

At this point, I assume box-office staff spend most of December wearily replying to parents who’ve booked the wrong one, sending the same reply on loop: “As per our T&Cs, no refunds are available for any reason whatsoever.”

So… if you do end up at Winter Funland in Olympia by mistake and can’t get a refund, will you actually be happy about it? I’d argue yes – profoundly.

For a start, it’s indoors. Hyde Park’s version very much isn’t – which is fine if you’ve magically picked the one freakishly warm and dry December day London produces each decade. For the other 99.9% of visits, you’re looking at a 50% chance of rain, 10 minutes of sunshine and temperatures that basically demand gloves and a hat.

Then there’s the fact that, at Winter Funland, all rides and attractions are included in the ticket price. I’m really not trying to start a thing against the OG of winter wonderlands, but Hyde Park’s version charges you to get in and then expects further payment for almost anything you want to actually experience. It’s the Ryanair of festive attractions – except Ryanair, to its credit, hasn’t yet found a way to charge for the toilets, and Winter Wonderland has.

And what can you actually do at Winter Funland, once you’ve paid the entrance fee? There are over 20 rides – including Dodgems, a Fun House, Waltzers, Frogs and Miami – and you can go on them as many times as your 3.5-hour session allows. They’re also bringing in a gigantic real ice rink, with skating instructors on hand to give advice (an astonishingly civilised touch) and penguin skate aids for wobbly children aged four and up.

There’s also a circus hosted by “cheeky elves”, full of tumbling tricks and ho-ho-based comedy, plus the usual lineup of festive food – hot dogs, burgers, chips, candy floss and more. (Those aren’t included in the ticket price, but I live in hope for next year.)

Now, the cost itself is… not tiny. It’s £37 per adult or £145 for a family of four, though under-3s go free. So if you’re trying to cut costs, the obvious solution is to borrow as many local two-year-olds as possible and form a sort of toddler co-op, splitting the final cost between all parents. (Let me know if you go with that idea, and whether you’d recommend it to others.)

And remember: you’re paying for unlimited rides, guaranteed warmth and the statistically rare sensation of being dry in December. You can’t put a price on that feeling. Well, they have. But hey, it’s Christmas.

Find out more: https://www.winterfunland.com/london/

👍️ Leighton House is an art museum and historic house, and it looks AMAZING. It’s Arab Hall has appeared in Nicholas Nickleby, Spooks, and – most excitingly, Gold by Spandau Ballet.

Gluegang Candle Decorating Workshop
Saturday 27 December, slots between 10:00 and 17:00
Level 1, Turbine Hall A, Battersea Power Station, Power Station Park, SW11 8DD (see the yellow square on this map for the precise location)
£14 per person

Gluegang Sparkle Slime Workshop
Sunday 28 December, slots between 10:00 and 17:00
Level 1, Turbine Hall A, Battersea Power Station, Power Station Park, SW11 8DD (see the yellow square on this map for the precise location)
£15 per person

Let’s start with a public service announcement about the Gluegang website. It is… awful. It doesn’t properly adjust to your screen, so if your browser window is even slightly the wrong size, entire chunks of text simply vanish. The tagline promises “PROCESS ART*” and then never explains what the asterisk is doing there or what “process art” actually means. “Organized” appears twice in the same paragraph, spelled with a proud American “z”, despite this being a UK company. If you click certain images at the bottom of the page, they just open as blank white boxes. And, on some parts of the site, the navigation just gives up and leaves.

Which is a real shame, because the actual activities are phenomenal.

Their birthday party options alone are enough to make every other arts-and-crafts operation in London quietly weep. There’s “cream craft”, where kids decorate jewellery boxes, phone cases or picture frames by piping thick, whipped, cake-style glue over them and adding charms, pearls, beads and rhinestones like they’re icing a birthday sponge. And “mermaid small worlds”, where they build underwater scenes from shells, sparkles and tiny ocean bits. There’s also “wands and potions” for crafting their own wands and mixing bubbling, coloured potion liquids like miniature magicians. And “clay doughnuts”, for moulding and decorating hyper-real pastry impostors entirely out of clay. (I would link to all these individual activities on the website, but the website won’t let me.) Plus many more. Doesn’t that all sound incredible?

All of which is a long way of saying: the Gluegang gang (?) are at Battersea Power Station this weekend, and you can try out their activities for yourself. There are two separate workshops running: one is a candle-decorating session, where kids paint and gem-up their own candles with wax paints and sparkly winter bits; the other is a sparkle slime workshop, where they mix, stretch and customise their own glittery slime completely from scratch. Both are billed as sensory, art-based messy play, and they’re leagues ahead of the usual “stick some tissue paper on a snowman and call it crafting” situation you find in other places.

If you’re already heading to Battersea for last-minute Christmas shopping, it’s a very tidy way to break up the afternoon. But the bigger win here is this: file Gluegang away now for the next birthday party panic. They come to you. They bring everything. And they are proof that ingenuity, beauty and genuinely great ideas are sometimes buried deep, deep inside the recesses of a truly dreadful website.

Find out more: https://www.gluegang.co.uk/event-details/candle-decorating / https://www.gluegang.co.uk/event-details/sparkle-slime-workshop

👍️ Of all the places you could ice skate this season, Battersea Power Station has one of the most beautiful settings. You’ll be gliding in front of the stunning Battersea Power Station itself – which sounds so much like an oxymoron – and will have “unrivalled views of the Thames”. There’s also the Christmas tree, which looks like what the Trafalgar Square one would look like if the Norwegians actually liked us. (The Boots baubles – representing this year’s sponsor – are admittedly a bit tacky.)

The Skate Trail looks spectacular, and there’s lots to do there for anyone who’s too young or wussy to skate – including vintage fairground rides, fairground games, and a drinks bar/cafe made of glass for hot chocolate, mulled wine and pizza.

Gustav Holst’s The Planets
Saturday 27 December, 14:30
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
£12–£56 per person

Now I’ll admit: this event won’t be as bloody brilliant as the “family” version the Barbican hosted earlier this year. That one involved a shorter runtime (always a win with kids), lots of comedy, and properly useful, interesting explanations of Holst’s intentions when writing the suite.

BUT, as someone who’s now been to a Planets performance a total of two times and therefore considers himself an undisputed expert, you should still go – because it’ll be spectacular. I mean it. The Barbican Hall is one of the loveliest places to hear an orchestra, even if the outside looks like someone let Le Corbusier loose with unlimited concrete and no adult supervision. And – as an authority on The Planets, which I’ve just remembered I’ve actually heard THREE times – I can state, without a flicker of doubt, that the London Symphony Orchestra performs it better than anyone else out there. (That’s including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which is a statement that may get me blacklisted from Radio 3 but never mind.)

The afternoon also includes Verdi’s Force of Destiny Overture and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2. There’s no particular thematic link to Holst, so I think the organisers simply wanted to programme three absolute bangers. Rachmaninov’s concerto is one of the most-played in the world, and the Verdi remains one of the great “we’re kicking off now, pay attention” openings in classical music.

Find out more: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2025/event/the-planets

The Elves and the Shoemaker
Saturday 27 December, 14:00 (also 30 December at 18:00 and 31 December at 15:30)
Dugdale Arts Centre, 39 London Road, Enfield, EN2 6DS
Adults £16, under-15s £13
Age guidance: not provided I’m afraid!

Do you know what really happens in some of the Grimms’ fairy tales? Gretel shoves the witch into an oven and burns her alive. Cinderella’s stepsisters each slice off a piece of their own foot to force it into the slipper (the blood pooling in the shoe gives them away). And the Queen believes she’s eating Snow White’s lungs and liver. (She isn’t, but she thinks she is, which is just as bad.)

The Grimms didn’t invent these stories – they collected them from the people already telling them – but they did keep adjusting them as the editions went on. Early versions are full of mutilation, cannibalism and general awfulness, while later editions lose some of the gore as the brothers realised that not every tale requires a body count or evil aunt to make a point.

One tale that never need much softening to begin with is The Elves and the Shoemaker. No one is cooked, cursed or chased into the forest by a lunatic wielding an axe. There are no villains. There’s not even a token troublemaker lurking in the background – which, in fairy-tale terms, is practically unheard of.

It follows a poor shoemaker who has enough leather left for just one final pair of shoes. He cuts the pieces before bed, resigned to the fact that he can’t afford leather for anything beyond this. By morning, the shoes have been expertly finished by unseen helpers – and so beautifully that a customer pays over the odds, giving the shoemaker enough to buy more leather and begin the cycle again. The couple’s fortunes improve, and when they eventually discover that their midnight workers are small, badly dressed elves, they make clothes for them in return. It’s the classic moral you find in so many Grimm tales: kindness paired with competence can make the world a lovely place to be.

Dugdale Arts Centre has now taken the story and given it a festive spin of its own – not unlike the way the Grimms reworked the versions they gathered. It’s resulted in what they call an “inventive and highly interactive 50-minute adventure, full of clowning, puppetry and a magical miniature world”. And no one loses a toe.

Find out more: https://www.dugdaleartscentre.co.uk/whats-on/the-elves-and-the-shoemaker

This section now brings together both new events I don’t have room to expand on and selected older ones from past newsletters that are still running. If you see a “(see my write-up here)”, that’s your cue to click through and rediscover whatever Past Me felt strongly enough to write about.

Christmas Comes to Moominvalley
Until 4 January (various start times)
Jacksons Lane Arts Centre, 269a Archway Road, N6 5AA
£12–£26
Age guidance: 3+

Grinchmas Afternoon Tea Sightseeing Bus Tour (see my write-up here)
Daily until 31 January, various time slots
Departs from Victoria Coach Station, 164 Buckingham Palace Road, SW1W 9TP
Adults £52, children £47
Age guidance: 5+

Me (see my write-up here)
Until 25 January (various dates and start times)
Little Angel Theatre, 14 Dagmar Passage, N1 2DN
Adults £17, children £15
Age guidance: 2–5

Hyakkō 100+ Makers from Japan (see my write-up here)
Daily until 10 May
Japan House, 101–111 Kensington High Street, W8 5SA
FREE – but booking is recommended

Dracapella (see my write-up here)
Until 17 January (various dates and start times)
Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP
£22.50–£47.50 per person
Age guidance: 10+

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter
Until 18 January, various start times (usually 11:00 and 14:30 on weekends)
Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, SW19 1SB
£10–£​​29 per person
Age guidance: 6–12

The Winter Bar Street Food Market
Until 2 January, 11:00–21:00 (Monday and Sunday, 11:00–18:00)
St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, WC2N 4JJ
FREE entry

The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Until 4 January, 11:00 and 14:00 on weekends, 10:30 and 13:30 on weekdays
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£15 per person
Age guidance: 3+

The Gingerbread City (see my write-up here)
Until 4 January, 09:00–17:30
Unit 5, 79–81 Coal Drops Yard, Stable Street, N1C 4DQ
Adults and 12+ £13.50, 3–12s £8.50, under-3s free

The Gruffalo’s Child (see my write-up here)
Until 11 January, various start times
£10–£24 per seat
Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, W1D 7ES
Age guidance: 3+

Mama Goose
Until 3 January, various start times
Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, E15 1BN
£10–£39.50 per person
Age guidance: 5+

The Night Before Christmas
Until 31 December (various days, 10:00 and 13:00)
artsdepot, 5 Nether Street, Tally Ho Corner, N12 0GA
£13.75 per person
Age guidance: 3–7

Little Women – Family Screening
Saturday and Sunday, 11:00
The Garden Cinema, 39-41 Parker Street, WC2B 5PQ
Pay what you can
Age guidance: rated U

The Nutcracker (reimagined)
Saturday 27 December at 11:00, Sunday 28 December at 11:00, 14:00 and 16:30 (plus other dates and times until 4 January)
St Martin’s Theatre, West Street, WC2H 9NZ
£23–£43 per person
Age guidance: 5+

Bluey’s Big Play
Saturday and Sunday, 11:00, 14:00 and 16:30 (plus various dates and start times until 11 January)
Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 8XX
£17–£37 per person
Age guidance: suitable for all