Holiday Season at the Clay Center Begins with Day of Festivities

Santa Claus is coming to town to ring in more than a month’s worth of festive fun at the Clay Center for the Arts & Sciences of West Virginia.

On Friday Nov. 24, the Clay Center hosted a “Holly Days” Kick-Off Event in its Avampato Discovery Museum, featuring Mr. Claus himself and a delicious hot chocolate bar at our Curiosity Café. Visitors were able to make ornaments in the Inventor’s Lab, use block printing to design holiday cards in the Art Studio, and build a cardboard house to add to the Clay Center’s gingerbread display of Charleston.

“We’re so excited to kick off our holiday season with such a festive, family-friendly event,” said Al Najjar, president and CEO of the Clay Center. "Over the next several weeks, we’ll be offering more than a dozen events that allow people of all ages to celebrate the creativity and childlike wonder that make the holidays so special.”

The Clay Center will continue to host Holly Days—with all of the hands-on activities present at the Kick-Off Event—every Saturday from Nov. 25 to Dec. 16 Mr. Claus will also return to the Clay Center during this time for Santa Saturdays on Nov. 25, Dec. 2, and Dec. 9.

For those hoping to make even more holiday memories with their little ones, the Clay Center is offering hands-on winter STEAM workshops, explorations of winter skies in the planetarium, a PG New Year’s dance party, and more. Multiple festive performances will also be taking place, including “The Nutcracker” ballet, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: The Musical,” and several shows from the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra.