Make the short jaunt to Canby for a half-mile walk through tunnels of holiday lights, a Christmas tree show at the rodeo arena, school band performances, and Santa himself. There's a holiday market, too, with gifts from local vendors, as well as kid-friendly craft activities. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for kids 4–12, and free for age 3 and under.

Bend’s High Desert Museum helps visitors weather the dark days of winter by staying open late every Thursday in December, with discounted rates, themed activities, and access to exhibitions (including a just-opened flannel show, which features such delights as sassy flannel-lined ski wear from the 1930s). Decorate cookies, print your own wrapping paper, design a lighted lantern, and munch on food and beverage samples. A different themed outfit—from ugly sweaters to pajamas—is encouraged each week.

Join staff and volunteers at Silver Falls State Park to celebrate the holiday season with craft activities, interpretive walks, and more (as of publication time, we're still waiting on the full slate of offerings). Activities are free, but drivers need to pay the $5 day-use fee to park.

The Geminids are considered by NASA to be one of the Northern Hemisphere's more "reliable" annual meteor showers, but they'll have some competition this year from the moon, which will be nearly full as the stellar light show is peaking. City lights and cloud cover provide further disruption, so to improve your chances of seeing more than 100 shooting stars per hour, we recommend heading out of town and seeking out clear skies—not an easy feat in Western Oregon in December.

Feel like meeting jolly ol' Saint Nick at the North Pole? Take a trip to Hood River, where every year the Mt. Hood Railroad transforms its excursion trains into delightful Christmas carriages. This year's Polar Express theme is new, but  everyone still gets a cookie, a mug of hot cocoa, and a chance to meet Santa. Tickets are $49–109 for the ride, which runs just over an hour.

It’s the season of big water on the Oregon Coast, with December the second of three months of extra-high tides. During this time, the Oregon King Tides Project—a citizen-science initiative organized by CoastWatch and the Oregon Coastal Management Program—asks for help documenting these king tides in an effort to understand the effects rising sea levels have on coastal communities. Participation in the project is open to anyone willing and able to venture out to the coast and operate a camera (but safety first, please).  

Some people hike to collect mushrooms, while others collect Oregon diorama ornaments. That's the name of the game on certain trails around the Willamette and Umpqua National Forests this time of year, where 200 tree baubles have been placed by the Willamette Valley Visitors Association, which has been putting on the annual ornament hunt since 2018. Find just one per household (leave some for others, dude) and it's yours to keep, plus you become eligible to enter a sweepstakes for a Willamette Valley getaway. But get out there soon—the ornaments were placed mid-November, and within the first week of the hunt nearly half had been found.

Whale alert! After summering in Alaska, thousands of gray whales are on the move south to the balmy lagoons of Baja, Mexico, and for about a week they can be spotted up and down the Oregon Coast. Volunteers will be posted at more than a dozen state parks to help visitors spot these majestic mammals, understand their migration patterns, and record their numbers.