International Holiday Storytelling Festival 2021

This year, the International Holiday Storytelling Festival 2021 is filling the metaverse with story and song, traditional, cultural, original, and international.

The events will be in AltspaceVR and ENGAGE XR. Please check the event list below and click the link to see the time in your time zone.

We have an amazing variety of stories, songs, and storytelling representing cultures and traditions from around the world. We are especially excited to include original holiday stories by the Creative Writing Meetup team in AltspaceVR as well as the amazing holiday concerts and sing-a-long with Margie Dimond in AltspaceVR again this year. Dr. Nancy Bixler is back this year to share excerpts in three special events from the famous A Christmas Carol by Dickens with discussions after on how these stories are still relevant today.

Each story is featured in custom designed virtual worlds that frame the stories in wonders. We’re returning to the Polar Express and Grinch worlds with hand-sculpted world building excellent using only geometrics and simple kits to recreate the magic of those stories. Some stories will be held inside a holiday snow glove where you will be shrunk down to fit inside to listen to amazing original stories. The Christmas Carol traditional story is told in a Victorian village cemetery! The Cherokee Holiday Stories event is in a custom snowflake pond that includes teaching Frosty the Snowman, and the audience, Cherokee words from the stories.

This Friday, AltspaceVR will be filled with song and laughter as we celebrate our first La Posada event with the newly formed Educadores en Español VR Team. This virtual recreation of the tradition of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter for the night, moving from home to home and being rejected until they reach the manger scene, is a beautiful community event followed by a rousing party complete with the breaking of a piñata. You will not want to miss that!

Lida of the EDVR World Builders Team specializes in 1:1 scale reproductions of Greek heritage sites, and she has brought us the Ancient Roman Saturnalia Festival in her Athens Agora Marketplace at night filled with food and wine and celebration to honor Saturn and demonstrate the events and activities, including the earliest gift giving traditions that continue today, integrated into modern celebrations of Christmas. This event will be repeated twice, but you won’t want to miss either of them.

This event produced by Educators in VR in cooperation with World Tours, Creative Writing Meetup, and Mark’s News & Updates in cooperation with AltspaceVR and the AltspaceVR community.

Bring family and friends to share this immersive holiday experience with stories from the United Kingdom, North America, Mexico, Spain, Russia, First Nations and Native Americans, and more, representing the diversity and global scale of Educators in VR.

The links to the events with the time in your time zone are below. For information on how to attend the events, see our How to Attend an Educators in VR Event guide. You may also subscribe to the Educators in VR Google Calendar or Educators in VR AltspaceVR events list to keep up with all the events in and around Educators in VR.