Christmas week at Watauga Lake

Karen here, with Bill. Christmas week at the lake is one of the weeks we look forward to most all year, and it is also the week we get the most nervous questions about. People want to know what is open, whether the drive is safe, whether the lake will be frozen, and whether the week between Christmas and New Year is actually worth spending in a quiet rental in east Tennessee.

The answers are not always what people expect.

What Christmas week looks like up here

The week runs December 22 through January 1. Most of our Christmas guests come for either the front half, around the holiday itself, or the back half from December 27 through January 2. A few do the whole 10 days.

Daytime temperatures typically run between 35 and 50 degrees. Nights drop to the low 20s, sometimes the teens in a cold snap. Snow at the lake happens three or four times in a typical December, with a real accumulating snow once every couple of years. When the snow comes the whole valley goes silent in a way that is hard to describe.

The lake itself does not freeze. It is 265 feet at its deepest, too much thermal mass for surface freezing. The edges of shallow coves can ice over in a hard cold snap. The main lake stays open. There are usually bald eagles around the open water near the dam all through the week.

What is closed

We’ll get this part out of the way up front because it surprises guests. Christmas week is the closing week for most of the seasonal businesses around the lake. The marinas wind down by mid-November and most do not reopen until March. Captain’s Table at Watauga Lakeshore Resort and Marina is typically closed all winter, with status that has been unstable since a 2023 fire, so call before you assume anything. The seasonal restaurants in Hampton mostly close. The Old Butler Museum is closed for the season. The wineries cut hours back to Friday and Saturday and close completely for Christmas week itself most years.

Christmas Day, almost nothing is open in Carter or Johnson counties. Some gas stations stay open. The Walmart in Elizabethton is closed Christmas Day. The Chinese restaurants in Johnson City are usually open, which is the reliable away-from-home Christmas dinner option if you do not want to cook, but Johnson City is 45 minutes away.

If you are coming Christmas week, plan on cooking. Bring or buy what you need for three or four meals at home. The kitchen is well stocked and the gas stove works well. We have hosted families who pulled off a full Christmas Day dinner for six in the kitchen, including a small turkey in the wall oven. It works.

What is open

The lake is open. The trails are open. The fire pit is open. These are the things that matter.

The Appalachian Trail along the south shore of the lake is one of the best winter walks in the southeast. From Shook Branch Recreation Area you can walk the flat shoreline section in either direction. The leaves are gone, which means views across the lake from sections of the AT that are walled off by foliage in summer. You will not see anyone else on the trail most December days.

The dam crossing is open all year. The AT crosses the top of the dam and you can walk out on it, three hundred feet above the river gorge. Eagles work the open water below the dam through the winter. Bring binoculars.

If you ski, Beech Mountain Resort is 35 minutes and Sugar Mountain Resort is 40 minutes, both in North Carolina, both running full Christmas week schedules. Lift lines are real, buy tickets in advance.

Inside the townhouse, the gas fireplace runs as long as you want it. The gas fire pit on the back porch runs in any weather. The jet tub is indoors. The townhouse stays warm with the thermostat at 68.

Christmas Eve dinner

This is the question we get more than any other about the week. The options are limited.

A few of the local places in Elizabethton stay open for a Christmas Eve lunch and early dinner, typically closing by 4 or 5 PM so the staff can be home with family. Ridgewood Barbecue in Bluff City, about 35 minutes from the lake, traditionally keeps a Christmas Eve lunch on the schedule. Ridgewood is one of the famous barbecue places in this part of the state and it is worth the drive on a regular day. Call ahead to confirm hours.

If you want a proper Christmas Eve dinner out, the move is to drive to Johnson City, 45 minutes, where a handful of hotel restaurants stay open through Christmas Eve evening.

The version we recommend for most guests is to plan a real Christmas Eve dinner at home, with a roast or a ham, a bottle of something good, candles on the table, fire in the fireplace. Then a small dessert and the back porch fire pit afterward with a glass of port or whiskey. The townhouse was built for this.

Where to find a Christmas tree

If you want a tree in the townhouse, this is the easiest part of the trip. Message us at least two weeks before your arrival and we will arrange a small live tree, usually a 5 or 6 foot Fraser fir, set up in the living room with a string of warm white lights before you arrive. We pass the cost through with no setup fee. The Fraser firs grown in the Avery County, North Carolina mountains 45 minutes from the lake are some of the best Christmas trees in the country.

If you want the cut your own experience, drive to one of the choose and cut farms in Avery County. The season runs from the day after Thanksgiving through the third week of December. By Christmas week itself, most farms are picked over, so this is a plan for an arrival of December 22 or earlier. We keep a small box of basic ornaments in the closet under the stairs that guests are welcome to use.

Christmas morning at the lake

This is the part of the year we wrote this article for. Christmas morning on the deck at this house, with the lake spread out below in whatever light the morning gave you, coffee in one hand, the trees on the ridge across the water either bare or dusted in snow, is one of the best Christmas mornings we have had in our lives. It is the reason we host Christmas week guests instead of going to Florida ourselves like our neighbors do.

The lake at sunrise on December 25 is empty. No boats, no jet skis, no music from somebody else’s deck. Sometimes wind, sometimes complete stillness, sometimes fog lifting off the water as the sun comes up over the eastern ridge. If you have kids, they will run out the door to look. If you do not, you will stand on the deck in a coat with a coffee and not say anything for ten minutes.

The morning ritual we have built into the week, and that several of our return Christmas guests have adopted: stockings and presents in the living room with the fireplace going, then everyone bundles up and drives eight minutes to the dam observation point for the Christmas morning lake walk. You can walk out across the top of the dam on the AT and stand at the middle, three hundred feet above the gorge, on Christmas morning. The eagles are usually there. The water is still. There is no one else.

Back at the house, dinner cooking starts around two in the afternoon. By six there is wine on the table, the fire is going, the day is winding down. After dinner, the fire pit on the back porch with whoever is still awake.

Pulling the new year out of a quiet week

The week between Christmas and New Year at this lake is the quietest week of the year. The lake is empty because Christmas week is a family week for most people, and the last few days of the year are usually the days people are exhausted from family and not yet ready to start anything.

We have come to think of this week as the pull-the-new-year-out-of-it week. You can sit on the back porch in the cold with the fire pit going and a notebook and actually think about the year you are about to start, in a way that is harder to do in a crowded place. You can take a long walk along the AT and let last year settle. You can sleep nine hours a night because there is nothing to wake up for.

Several of our Christmas-and-New-Year guests have adopted a small ritual for the last morning of the year. They take their coffee to the deck at first light, watch the lake come up out of the dark, and write one sentence about the year that just ended and one about the year that is starting. You do not need this ritual specifically. The point is that the lake gives you the space to invent one.

There are no organized fireworks on the lake on New Year’s Eve. From the back porch you can usually see two or three small displays in the distance, faint and brief. For dinner, the same options as Christmas Eve apply. The version we recommend is a slow dinner at home, the fire pit, a bottle of champagne at midnight, the back porch, the cold air, and a quiet count to twelve. January 1 morning is one of the best mornings of the year for a walk along the dam.

What we will do

We keep the fireplace pilot and the fire pit pilot lit. We salt the driveway before snow events and shovel within a few hours of accumulation. We are available by text the whole week including Christmas Day. We will have a small bottle of something on the kitchen island when you arrive if you tell us a few days in advance.

For the broader winter context, see our winter getaway guide. For the property mechanics in cold weather, see the property page. For dinner options that stay open in the off season, see where to eat near Watauga Lake. To check availability, go to the booking page as early as you can.

Christmas week here is not busy. That is the point. The lake holds the week for you. You bring the people and the food and the small rituals. We will keep the fire going.