If you have ever spent Christmas in Shipshewana, you know it doesn’t take long to understand why people come back year after year.
Article sponsored by Shipshewana LaGrange County Visitors Bureau.
Maybe it’s the smell of a family-style meal hitting the table at the Blue Gate Restaurant. Maybe it’s wandering through the Davis Mercantile looking for one more Christmas gift, grabbing popcorn for the road or stopping at Yoder’s Meat & Cheese because somehow you always leave with more than you planned. Maybe it’s hearing Christmas music while you shop, watching the lights come on across town, or packing everyone into the car for a drive through the Shipshewana Lights of Joy.
That is the Shipshewana Christmas experience, and Visit Shipshewana: A Christmas Story brings those moments together through the people and businesses that make them happen.
Throughout the film, you’ll see familiar Shipshewana places like Blue Gate Restaurant & Theatre, Blue Gate Performing Arts Center, Farmstead Inn and Conference Center, Yoder’s Meat & Cheese Company, Yoder Department Store, Shipshewana Popcorn Co., Yoder’s Red Barn Shoppes and Davis Mercantile.
But this story is not really about buildings. It is about the people inside them. The families carrying on longtime traditions. The business owners who know their customers by name. The makers creating things by hand. The people preparing meals from recipes that have been passed down for generations. The shopkeepers decorating every corner before the Christmas season begins. The people who live here and genuinely enjoy sharing Shipshewana with the people who come to visit.
That is what makes Christmas here feel different.
You can sit down to a family-style meal and pass bowls around the table. You can shop for something made locally instead of pulling it off a warehouse shelf. You can create a handmade gift, catch a Christmas show, walk through stores dressed up for the season and experience something new together.
And then there are the lights.
When evening comes, Shipshewana changes. Downtown glows, Christmas displays light up the night, and horse-drawn buggies still make their way through town right alongside visitors taking it all in. It is one of those scenes that feels almost too perfectly Christmas to be real, but here, it is just part of the season.
That is the story we wanted to tell. Not simply that Shipshewana is beautiful at Christmas, but why it feels the way it does. It is the people. The traditions. The food. The shops. The faith. The hospitality. The familiar places families return to and the new memories they make when they get here.
So come hungry. Come ready to shop. Stay for a show. See the lights. Take the long way through town.
And make Christmas in Shipshewana part of your family’s story, too.
