Cape May Turns On Its Lights

Cape May spends the summer being America's oldest seaside resort and the winter being something rarer, a Victorian town at Christmas, which is to say a town whose architecture finally gets the lighting it was designed for. The gingerbread porches take garland the way a frame takes a picture, the gas lamps do the rest, and the whole historic district, six hundred preserved buildings deep, turns into the most convincing December stage set in the country, except that people live in it. Everything below assumes two nights in the first three weeks of December.

The Victorian hotels and guesthouses are the point of the season, since the decorations inside match the ones outside and the parlors run fires all day. The grand old hotel on the main beach block dresses its columns and its lobby to full period effect, and the smaller inns of the district compete with one another in a spirit the town politely declines to call competition. Book by October. December weekends here sell like summer Saturdays.

The evening walk is the season's main event. The historic district lights itself street by street, the trolley and lamplight tours run all month for those who want the stories told properly, and the correct route on foot runs the gaslit blocks between the mall and the beachfront, ending at the ocean, which keeps working all winter whether anyone watches or not. Dress for the wind off the water and take the walk nightly. It changes with the weather, which is the point of a walk.

Winter thins the town to its year-round core, which improves it. The kitchens that stay open are the ones cooking for neighbors, the tables are easy where August requires strategy, and the bars with fireplaces become the town's living rooms by the second week of December. Book the weekend dinners anyway, since the Christmas crowds concentrate, and take at least one long lunch by a window with the light going silver over the water.

The town builds through the month, house tours and carol evenings and the decorated inns opening their doors on a schedule the visitor should check before choosing dates. The first two weeks carry the full show with manageable crowds. The week between Christmas and New Year brings the families and the fullest calendar, and early January, for the contrarian, offers the lights still up and the town entirely to itself.

Come midweek if the calendar allows, book the inn and the dinners together in the fall, and pack for real cold, since the wind arrives off the Atlantic with nothing to slow it down. The beach in winter is not a consolation prize. Walk it once at low tide in the cold sun and it will argue for the whole season.

On the last evening, take the lamplight walk one more time, all the way to the ocean end. The town spent a century and a half building itself for exactly this light, and for a few weeks every winter, it gets to be entirely itself.