The Saint Nicholas festivities in Nancy

The Saint Nicholas festivities in Nancy

From November 22, 2024 to January 5, 2025

The two high points of the winter season in eastern France are the Christmas Market in Strasbourg and the Saint Nicholas Festivities in Nancy!

Saint Nicholas is traditionally celebrated throughout Lorraine, but it’s in Nancy that the liveliest and most lavishfestivities take place. The official feast day of Saint Nicholas is 6 December, but the patron saint of Lorraine deserves more than just one day of celebration! The highlight of the festivities is the first weekend in December, when people flood the streets to enjoy two days of parades and processions, floats and music, and of course sweets and confectionery.

Enter the world of Saint Nicholas: the majestic Place Stanislas with its illuminated tree, Place de la Carrière with its big wheel and the pedestrian area and its lanterns. Take a break to enjoy a chocolate or gingerbread Saint Nicholas. Illuminations, artistic commissions and decorated windows transform the city into an open-air art gallery.

Every evening during the six weeks of festivities, a video mapping on the façade of the town hall retells the legend of the three children rescued by Saint Nicholas from the evil butcher.

The festivities also include Christmas Markets, known here as the villages of Saint-Nicholas, which boasts numerous artisanal stalls.

St. Nicholas Weekend: December 7 and 8, 2024

At the heart of the Fêtes de Saint-Nicolas, the Saint-Nicolas weekend is usually an emblematic and magical moment, with two days of free festivities open to all in the city. Shows, street parades, Ferris wheels, gastronomic villages and craft markets, extraordinary creatures, museum activities, concerts, not forgetting the eagerly awaited parade… countless surprises await you!

St. Nicholas Parade – Saturday, December 7

In the late afternoon of Saturday, the great Saint-Nicolas parade is a magical moment, with its floats imagined and decorated by the communes of the Greater Nancy area, and its fantastic creatures. Each year features a new theme.

In 2024, discover “Imaginary Futures”! Will the future be robotic, technological, intergalactic or ecological?

Program:

• 4:30pm: entertainment along the parade route
• 5pm: Butcher’s children fanfare on the façade of the Opéra national de Lorraine, place Stanislas
• 5:30pm: Parade departs from place Carnot
• 6pm: DJ set by Ben Unzip, place Stanislas
• At the end of the parade: the mayor hands over the keys to Saint-Nicholas, and the mapping-video projection takes place, place Stanislas.

A weekend of entertainment – Saturday December 7 and Sunday December 8

All weekend long, it’s time to take to the streets and enjoy the entertainment. From early afternoon to late afternoon, this year you’ll be able to meet amusing robots, enigmatic aliens and strange wide-eyed creatures, who will rock the Place Stanislas, Place de la Carrière, Place Vaudémont and the pedestrian walkway between Rue du Pont-Mouja and Porte de la Craffe.

Street artists and performers invade the pedestrian zone, passing through various festive hamlets, from 11 a.m. onwards with almost 70 performances.

Schedule of events :

• Saturday, December 7, 2024 > from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., then from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. until the parade.
• Sunday, December 8, 2024 > 11am to 5pm