Thanksgiving falls on November 26 this year, and every Westchester host knows how the weekend goes. Thursday runs on its own momentum. Then Friday morning arrives with a houseful of relatives, a refrigerator full of leftovers, four hours of good daylight and nobody who wants to go to the mall.
What follows is a Friday-to-Sunday plan built around places that are open, close to home and good with a mixed-age group, plus a few notes for the adults 21+ in the house.
Thursday: what is closed
Know this before anyone suggests an outing between courses. The Hudson River Museum in Yonkers closes on Thanksgiving. Lyndhurst in Tarrytown closes on Thanksgiving. Most of the county's smaller museums do the same.
The Thursday move is a walk. Rockefeller State Park Preserve in Mount Pleasant, with trail access from Sleepy Hollow, is open year-round from sunrise to sunset, with 55 miles of carriage roads and a loop around 24-acre Swan Lake that suits every pace in the family. An hour on the carriage roads between the parade and the bird is the best decision a host makes all day.
Friday: the farm and the film
Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture at 630 Bedford Road in Pocantico Hills is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9:30 AM to 3 PM. Walking the grounds needs no reservation, and parking is free on Fridays; the $20-per-vehicle weekend fee applies May through November, so Friday is the cheaper day to go. The gatehouse is cashless. Kids get animals and fields, adults get a long walk with a working-farm view, and everyone is back in the car by early afternoon. From the Tarrytown Metro-North station it is about ten minutes by taxi, which helps for guests who came up by train.
For the evening, the Jacob Burns Film Center at 364 Manville Road in Pleasantville is the right answer to a family that cannot agree on anything. The nonprofit opened in June 2001 in the old Rome Theater, a 1925 Spanish mission-style movie house, and now runs five screens. With that many rooms going, the schedule usually has something for every generation in the car, and splitting up for two hours is its own kind of holiday gift.
Friday night: the lights
Westchester's Winter Wonderland, the drive-through light show at Kensico Dam Plaza in Valhalla, has made the day after Thanksgiving its opening night: the 2025 season ran from November 28 through December 31, with 1.2 miles of lights, nightly from 4:30 PM. Tickets are sold per car, and the per-vehicle price has run roughly $35 to $47 depending on the night. Check wwinterwonderland.com for the 2026 dates before promising it to anyone.
It is a drive-through, which makes it the one stop on this list where the car rules matter most. Cannabis cannot be consumed in a motor vehicle in New York, by the driver or any passenger, moving or parked. The designated driver for the light show is the designated driver for the whole night.
Saturday: the museum with the planetarium
The Hudson River Museum at 511 Warburton Avenue in Yonkers reopens after the holiday with weekend hours of 11 AM to 5 PM. Adult admission is $15 and youth tickets are $8, with free parking in the front lot. The planetarium runs shows on Saturdays and Sundays at 12:30, 2 and 3:30 PM, sold as an add-on, and it is the move for a group that spans eight to eighty. Glenview, the museum's historic house, is closed for restoration, so plan the visit around the galleries and the dome.
Saturday afternoon: the Gilded Age at Christmas
Lyndhurst, the Gould mansion on the river in Tarrytown, starts its holiday mansion tours over Thanksgiving weekend and runs them through December, with the house dressed for the season. Tours sell out, and advance tickets are the only sensible approach for a group. A weekday slot in December is quieter, but for houseguests in town only through Sunday, this is the weekend.
If some of the family arrives early, Lyndhurst's Carriage House stages Oscar Wilde's *The Importance of Being Earnest* from November 6 through 22, which works as a pre-holiday evening out.
Sunday: the soft landing
Sunday is for getting people to trains on time. Keep it local: a late breakfast, a short walk, and the Hudson Line or Harlem Line back to the city before dark. If the group wants one more outing, the carriage roads at Rockefeller are still there, and they look different with three days of conversation behind you.
The weekend at a glance
- Thursday: walk at Rockefeller State Park Preserve before dinner.
- Friday: Stone Barns in the morning, Jacob Burns at night, or the light show at Kensico Dam.
- Saturday: Hudson River Museum and the planetarium, then Lyndhurst's holiday tour.
- Sunday: breakfast, a walk, trains home.
For the adults 21+ in the house
A family holiday at a private home is one of the places where adult-use cannabis is legal, and it is also where the most care is needed. Store products in their original child-resistant packaging, locked or well out of reach of anyone under 21 and away from pets. Adults can share cannabis within the possession limits with other adults 21 and older; selling it, or trading it for something, is not legal.
Licensed shops across Westchester shift their hours around the holiday, so check before heading out, and verify licensed status via the OCM QR code at cannabis.ny.gov. Current options are on the dispensary map. Every outing above is a park, a museum, a farm or a theater, and none of them is a place to consume. New York state law prohibits cannabis consumption on state-owned land and in public spaces, which includes the Rockefeller preserve. Edibles at a holiday table call for start low, go slow, and nobody who has consumed should be driving guests to the train. The rest of the season's calendar is on the events page.
