Every year, the week after Thanksgiving, Frisco puts the kettle on for the whole town. More than fifty businesses on and around Main Street ladle out their own version of wassail, a hot spiced cider, and people walk from door to door in the cold to taste them. It is called Wassail Days, and in 2026 it runs from Saturday, November 28 to Sunday, December 6.
What is wassail?
Wassail is hot spiced cider, the old winter drink of sharing: apples, warmth, something sweet, something sharp, passed from hand to hand between neighbors. In Frisco every business keeps its own recipe, and some guard theirs closely. Half the pleasure is how different twelve cups of the same idea can taste.
How the 12 Sips of Wassail card works
Pick up a 12 Sips of Wassail card at a participating business. Taste wassail at twelve different places, get the card marked at each one, and vote for your favorite. Bring the finished card to the Frisco/Copper Information Center at 300 Main Street and trade it for the year's commemorative Wassail Days mug, while they last. The 2026 mug was designed by Hayley Pfleeger, and the town reveals it in November.
Bring your own reusable mug for sampling. The town posts the list of participating businesses in mid-November. In 2025 it ran from the galleries and the coffee roasters to Next Page Books, the clothing shops and the breweries, and one feed store even poured wassail for dogs.
The 2026 schedule
- Saturday, November 28: Small Business Saturday and the first day of wassail. Carolers set out from Frisco Historic Park at 5:45 pm, the town tree is lit at 6 pm, and Santa visits the gazebo from 6:30 to 8.
- Sunday, November 29: Santa at the Historic Park gazebo, 11 am to 12:30 pm.
- Tuesday, December 1: Santa's Calling, 6 to 8 pm, for children signed up online during November.
- Saturday, December 5: Breakfast with Santa at the Summit County Community and Senior Center, 8:30 to 10:30 am, then Storytime with Reindeer at the Frisco Historic Park and Museum, 10:30 to 11, with the Summit County Library. Santa is back in the gazebo from 11 to 1.
- Sunday, December 6: The last day of wassailing, and the last day to turn in your card.
The town notes that the schedule can change, so check the Town of Frisco's Wassail Days page before you go.
How to do it slowly
Nobody has to finish the card in an afternoon. The best way is a few cups a day, between other things: a walk down Main Street as the light goes blue, a stop for a book, a bowl of something hot, a seat by somebody's window. Wassail Days is nine days long on purpose.
A few small things that help:
- The Information Center is closed on Thanksgiving Day, and the wassail starts on Saturday, so there is no hurry.
- Gifts bought in Frisco are wrapped free at the Information Center from November 28 to December 23. Bring the receipt.
- Dress for it. This is Main Street at nine thousand feet in December.
A book for the week
My keeper's book, Come In. It's Already Warm., comes out on Thanksgiving Day, two days before the kettles go on. It is a large hardcover about a man who keeps a house at the foot of a mountain, with hand-drawn maps of the country around it, seventeen plates, and the recipes the house runs on.
It is the same idea as Wassail Days, really: a town deciding, for nine days, that whoever walks in from the cold should be handed something warm.
Signed copies come from the house at $79, and the Kindle edition is $9.99. If you are in Frisco for Wassail Days, I hope someone hands you a cup.