Kentucky's Most Christmas-Movie Towns (With This Year's Dates and Costs)!

This spring, on a Thursday night in April, it snowed on Main Street in one small Kentucky town. Then, at the end of August, with the trees still green, it snowed there again. A film crew had turned a real Kentucky downtown into a Christmas movie, twice in one year. We count down twelve Kentucky towns that look like a Hallmark Christmas movie, from a cannonball in Elizabethtown's square to candlelight at Shaker Village, Santa on a freight train in Midway, the North Pole of Kentucky in Bardstown and the birthplace of the woman who starred in White Christmas. For every town: this year's dates where they're posted, what it costs, and the one thing that can spoil your visit. CHAPTERS 0:00 Snow on Main Street, twice 0:37 12 towns, and how we check them 1:22 #12 Elizabethtown 3:04 #11 MainStrasse Village, Covington 4:35 #10 Midway 6:03 #9 Shelbyville 7:34 #8 Paducah 9:06 #7 Lebanon 10:39 #6 Glasgow 12:09 #5 Danville 14:00 #4 Harrodsburg and Shaker Village 16:05 #3 Bardstown 17:51 #2 Maysville (and Augusta) 20:43 Honorable mention: Versailles 21:08 #1 Paris 24:21 Which town would you pick? SOURCES Only sources the narration itself names are listed. Add the links from your research notes (research/hk13-a.md, hk13-b.md) before publishing. Each town's tourism office and event pages (dates, hours, prices as posted for 2026) HGTV (Bardstown, favorite Christmas town in Kentucky); Southern Living (cutest Christmas towns list) Hallmark, "America's Merriest Christmas Towns" contest, 2026 (Versailles, Top 25 final) UNESCO Creative Cities Network (Paducah) US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020–24 (population, median home values) National Register of Historic Places Imagery for the fly-ins and satellite views: USDA NAIP aerial photography via the USGS National Map (public domain) CREDITS See `credits-hk13.md` (paste its full text here before publishing). Music — REQUIRED IN THE DESCRIPTION "Winter Chimes", "Frost Waltz", "Winter Reflections" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Sound effects: original, made for Hidden Kentucky. Notes Dates and prices change: check each town's page before you go. Every place named on screen is shown with real photos of that place, its satellite view or its map. Maps, charts, fly-ins and satellite views are original to Hidden Kentucky. No third-party YouTube footage. TAGS Kentucky Christmas towns, Hallmark Christmas movie towns, Paris Kentucky, Bardstown Christmas, North Pole of Kentucky, Shaker Village Candlelight, Pleasant Hill, Midway Kentucky, MainStrasse Village, Covington Christkindlmarkt, Elizabethtown, Shelbyville, Paducah Christmas on the River, Lebanon Dickens Christmas, Glasgow, Danville, Harrodsburg, Maysville, Rosemary Clooney, White Christmas, Augusta Kentucky, Versailles Kentucky, Christmas in Kentucky, Hidden Kentucky