(Music)
Shimmering lights and caroling signal the return of the Christmas Ships, a Northwest
tradition.
Wow!
Crafted with care, the Gingerbread Village is a sight to behold.
Just don't take a bite.
And Winterfest hits its stride.
See what it takes to create this holiday wonderland.
These stories and more coming up next on CityStream.
(Show theme music)
Hello, I'm Nicole Sanchez and welcome to this special holiday edition of CityStream, coming
to you from Winterfest at the Seattle Center Armory.
(Music)
This festival appeals to all ages.
From a train village to an ice rink... ice sculpting to choirs and bands, Winterfest
is packed with holiday fun.
Twinkling lights are a sure sign of the holiday season.
And when that glow comes from the water, it might mean the Christmas Ships are nearby.
This floating festival has been a Seattle-area tradition since 1949, spreading holiday cheer
to close to 65 waterfront communities.
<<< STORY: CHRISTMAS SHIPS >>>
(Carolers: "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...")
From the moment you step onto the Argosy Christmas Ship, you can't help but catch the holiday
spirit.
(Christmas carols)
Oh it's a lot of fun, it's our first time.
It's been awesome, are you having fun?
Yeah.
The ship itself is decked out in lights and lots of holiday decor getting everyone into
a festive mood.
(Christmas carols) Oh we're psyched, it's very festive.
It's really decorated.
The boat is fabulously festive.
The carolers are dressed up wonderfully.
(Carolers: "...need a little Christmas right this very minute.
It hasn't snowed a single flurry, but Santa dear we're in a hurry, so...")
The Dickens carolers not only look authentic, they sound great too.
(Carolers)
The carolers are pretty amazing.
There is something here for everyone to enjoy, no matter your age.
Two months.
I love it.
We did it during the daytime, but I love it at night.
So much action.
Many of the cruises include a special VIP guest.
Santa!
Santa, who helps the kids get inspired with a HO, HO, HO contest.
HO, HO, HO.
Ho, Ho, Ho.
A great fun time for little kids, and the bigger kids too.
The Argosy Cruise's Christmas Ship festival stops at dozens of waterfront communities,
including Seattle, Tacoma, Renton, Kirkland and more.
We get to go to a lot more places.
We get to spread all of this Christmas joy, it's really fun.
Folks can buy tickets to sail on the Spirit of Seattle, which is the official Christmas
Ship, or they can ride in one of the follow boats.
Local boat owners also join in, lighting up their vessels, creating a parade of shimmering
lights on the water.
(Horn blasts from boats)
We're very impressed with all these little boats that have come out, despite the weather.
Each night of the festival the ships cruise to different locations where crowds of people
gather onshore.
Like here, at Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park, where the clam lights are stunning.
Or here at Newcastle Beach park in Bellevue.
It's a really nice concert.
The carolers are always so good and the ships are really pretty.
And some evenings they have special events onshore, like bonfires, to help you stay warm
on our damp, chilly nights.
(Carolers: "Where fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains, repeat the...")
But no matter where you experience the Christmas Ship festival it's sure to help you get into
the holiday spirit, something many people say they need, especially this year.
(Applause)
Oh, definitely, you can never have too much Christmas spirit.
Especially with all the conflict in the world, it's just nice to bring joy to people.
It's great to see people having a good time and with people they don't even know.
You know, we need a lot more of this.
It's the perfect way to end a year.
(Carolers: "...home, sweet, home, there's no place like home for the holiday.")
A portion of the ticket sales goes to the Seattle Times Fund for the Needy which helps
to raise money for several local charities.
You can learn more about the Christmas Ship Festival by going to ArgosyCruises.com.
(Music) Next on CityStream, we'll tour this enchanted
land made from the sweetest ingredients, and a little holiday magic!
<<< END SEGMENT 1 >>> This time of year, as visions of sugar plums
dance in our heads... our stomachs make room for delicious treats like candy canes, sugar
cookies, chocolate truffles and peppermint bark.
All of this comes together as one at the Sheraton Hotel's Gingerbread Village!
Seattle's top architecture firms join with hotel culinary staff to turn all this goodness
into elaborate designs.
All of this benefits the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
<<< STORY: GINGERBREAD VILLAGE >>>
1, 2, 3, Open Gingerbread Village.
(Applause)
So this is the Sheraton Grand Seattle, and this is the Gingerbread Village.
(Music)
This year's theme is inspired by The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, it's a Whoville theme.
(Sneaky music)
And actually as you go through the room here, it actually has the scenes from different
sections of the film.
And some of them are throwbacks to the old ones, some of the ones from the Jim Carrey
movie, and some of them are from the new one as you can see her head is quite... big.
There's 60 pounds of sugar up there.
There's a lot of pulled sugar that was done just to make sure these things happened, so.
(Music)
All kinds of candy.
There's some Gingerbread dough, there's royal icing and there's also some sugar that's on
it.
The tree is actually made of pulled sugar.
The Grinch is made out of fondant, there's some M&M's, 90% edible.
But you don't want to eat it, because a lot of hands have been on it.
(Music)
All of our guests at the Sheraton Grand come to see the Gingerbread Village and leave a
donation for JDRF.
I have a penny.
A penny?
You're not very generous.
A penny?
It's shiny and new! (laughs)
This is to help drive knowledge for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
It is free to the public, but you can donate.
I think his heart is growing.
When you have our leadership team - all of our culinarians - partnered with architectural
firms here in Seattle.
And this particular one is MG2, and our elf this year is Natalie, and she's amazing.
And there's actually an elf assigned to each structure to help.
And this one actually was Olive, and her family, and they actually come in and say well what
about this or this one can go there.
They did a lot, they actually did all these circles down here with my son and daughter
and they do a lot of hard work.
We even use local sugar artists.
We actually used a company called Quincy Cakes that did these.
We have chef Joleen Anderson right here.
She's got a tattoo of sugar on her arm.
We have our Executive Sous Chef David Mestl, he loves the Seahawks and fishing, so there's
him.
We have chef Jay Sardeson over here.
He has his little bunny.
And then we have Lee Baldyga with his daughter's name Hope on his hat.
He's inventorying the Whoville kitchen.
And then me down there at the very bottom in the Who kitchen.
And there's little secrets hidden in different ones, like the nod to Dr. Who, and one of
them...
We have Natalie's dog Waffles.
I personally love when I'm not in my uniform and I come out and I hear people, cause that's
when you see, like, honest feedback, there's a lot of wow.
Wow... so cool... look at all the stuff down there.
Wow that's big, wow that's cool, look at that, how that one moves.
That's insane.
Oh we figure, over 8,000 man-hours to build all these.
So, it's every waking hour after our normal jobs, so you know it's got to be something
to us.
The Gingerbread Village at the Sheraton Hotel runs through January 1st.
Admission is free, but there is a suggested $5 donation to help raise money for the Juvenile
Diabetes Research Foundation.
You can learn more by going to gingerbreadvillage.org.
It's the hub of all things festive!
But making Winterfest happen is no easy task.
We'll show you as CityStream continues.
As you can see, Winterfest is in full swing.
The popular train & village are always a crowd pleaser; the ice rink is filled with skaters;
and dozens of choirs, bands and orchestras will take their turn on the main stage.
It's all humming along nicely, but as you can imagine it's a huge production.
Producer Randy Eng gives us a behind the scenes look.
<<< STORY: WINTERFEST >>>
So now is the time of year at Seattle Center for Winterfest.
Where you'll find Winterfest ice rink and Winter Train & Village.
We are in front of the Winter Train & Village, and this has been part of Seattle Center Winterfest
since 1975.
The train set was built by three Boeing engineers using airplane motors in the 1950's and then
they actually started building the buildings that you see here to depict an 1800's village.
They displayed it at the Northgate Mall up until the 1962 World's Fair.
And then it got put away and then it came out again in the 1970's and came to Seattle
Center.
And then over the years, we've added buildings.
The most striking building we've added is way at the back and that's a replica of King
Street Station.
We have actually a group of people that come in November every year and put this together.
We store all of the different elements of Winter Train & Village and then they need
to take them all out.
They put together the platform that you see, about 40 feet long it sits on and then they
start to bring all the buildings out of storage, and place them, all the ponds, and the white
snow made out of cotton, and the trees, and all the people that you see the little figurines
inside Winter Train & Village.
The gauge is called G-gauge.
This is the largest size of model train that you cannot ride, sit on and ride.
There are larger scales, but this is the largest scale that is just remotely operated.
These have been adapted where you don't need track power, and they carry batteries.
I enjoy working with the youngsters.
I'm starting to get repeat customers, adults who now bring their kids and say your grandpa,
your grandma brought me down, now I'm a parent and I'm now get to bring you down to run a
train.
I get enjoyment of just setting a train on a track and watching it go around, mesmerizing
you, if you want to call it that.
What is new this year, we are offering a scavenger hunt.
There are lots of little figurines, lots of activities going on in Winter Train & Village.
If they answer five questions correctly they can enter to win a prize.
And the prize is four free passes to Winterfest ice rink.
Winterfest ice rink has been around for decades, and it's one of our signature, sort of, parts
of Winterfest.
It's 4,500 square feet of ice, over 8,400 gallons of water go into making it every year.
It takes about 2 1/2 weeks to construct from beginning to end.
And then one week of that is the slow, arduous process of just making the ice.
There is a sort of a rubber layer first, which, you know, is sort of like a container for
water like a pond, you can imagine.
And then over top of that are coils of tubing of which this product called glycerol goes
through, which is the freezing agent.
You have to sort of do it 100% right, because if there is a mistake, which you discover
after you've made the ice, to go back and fix that is ridiculously hard.
It does take about, I would say, five days.
Five days of throwing water on that thing.
It's spraying a layer of water, letting it freeze, spraying another layer of water and
letting it freeze.
If it's only partially freezes before you keep adding water, then you get sort of a
soft, yucky sort of quality of ice.
And we really want something that's nice and hard and durable.
The Fisher Pavilion here, which hosts the ice rink, has these roll up doors which go
out on the outside, and there's often days which it is cold outside where we purposely
roll the doors up to let some of that cold air in and keep it sort of at a good temperature
inside here.
A lot of work and effort goes into it, especially here in Seattle in which our temperatures
don't normally drop that cold.
So, in another part of the country, in which you could have an outdoor ice rink, where
nature is doing a lot of the work for you, it's cold out there.
Here in Seattle we don't necessarily have that condition, so we really have to artificially
pump in that cold that maintain
the ice over time.
(Music)
Speaking of ice, this next story gives me the chills just thinking about it.
It's certainly one way to ring in the New Year.
Seattle Channel photographers give us an up-close look at the Polar Bear Plunge.
<<< STORY: POLAR BEAR PLUNGE >>>
(Music: Beethoven's Ode to Joy)
From the Polar Bear Plunge to pounding rice, CityStream returns with an ancient tradition
believed to bring good fortune.
Good!
<<< STORY: FAS PINE CAR RACE >>>
(Harmonica music)
Alright, here we've got the FAS Cup, where
first place gets the cup and second place is the first loser.
Our special holiday edition of CityStream returns from
Winterfest at the Seattle Center.
You know as the new year approaches, friends and family gather for the centuries-old tradition
of pounding rice.
The end result is a soft cake known as, mochi.
It's said to bring good luck.
Producers Shannon Gee and Ian Devier take a look.
This is a very traditional Japanese, so to speak, festival.
Always New Year's, we celebrate with a mochi, which is a rice cake.
And, is a traditional, very authentic way to pound the mochi.
Hi, Hi, Hi...
And also to show the younger generation.
Hi, Hi, Hi...
I just wanted to show my kids what mochitsuki was.
My mom remembers a time when her grandparents would pound and she would tell me about it.
So, I really wanted the boys to see the pounding.
Hi, Hi, Hi...
Of course, we use this machine to make mochi.
And we steam the rice in here, and then once the steaming is done we push pound, and it
starts mixing and pulverizing the rice so it's very sticky.
It's gooey.
Roll it into a ball.
It's really sticky right now.
This is going to be a huge one, just so I can show...
And you pinch a little bit of it and you squeeze it together and then other side of it will
be a lot smoother.
And this side your bottom, so you want to pinch your bottom so you can smooth out the
top so it's like a mushroom.
And see how you poke it up and it's like becomes a mushroom at the top?
That's what you want.
And when you get it to the texture that you like, put some flour in your hand and smooth
it out.
And that is your mochi.
Many ways to eat.
Daikon, which is a white radish.
Soy sauce.
Seaweed too.
We wrap in a seaweed and then we eat.
What else we eat?
Red beans.
Yeah, fried beans.
Sweet bean paste, make it kind of like a soup and then put it in.
We're just frying it in butter and then getting a nice brown on both sides, and just finish
it off with sugar and soy sauce.
I don't know, I've had it since I was a kid and a lot of people here have never tried
it, so.
Oh, that's a new one that I didn't know.
Good.
So, it's a very symbolic thing.
Yeah, it's supposed to be a good luck.
Mochi is supposed to be good luck.
And then also, they celebrate.
You know if you eat the mochi that means... that you live longer.
That wraps up this holiday edition of CityStream.
If you'd like to learn more about any of the Winterfest activities just go to seattlecenter.com/winterfest.
And, from our family at the Seattle Channel to yours, have a safe and joyous holiday.
We leave you now with the Timber Ridge Elementary School Choir.
I'm Nicole Sanchez, thanks for watching.
To learn more about CityStream and the Seattle Channel find us on Facebook and Twitter.
You can also watch us on our Comcast HD channel 321 and on Wave Cable channel 721.