A bracing work of art ... Antony Gormley's Another Place. Photograph: Bruno Vincent/Getty
It may be stretching the definition of "cultural" but think Turner Prize and installations, and you have my top arts event in the north this Christmas. It's the annual Boxing Day sea swim at Seaton Carew, the bracing little resort near Hartlepool which has been made world-famous by "canoeist" John Darwin and his wife Anne.
They won't be there of course; their remand conditions confine them to jail. But you can expect lots of fun and games, canoe-themed pranks and goosebumped, human versions of Antony Gormley's cast-iron men on Crosby beach. That's another northern arts experience for a healthy Christmas walk, after Sefton district council's U-turn about demolishing the mannequins.
The swim at Seaton Canoe (as fake signs now call the resort on all approach roads) starts at on the beach by the Social Club at 11.30am. Directions to Gormley's installation - called Another Place - can be found here.
Opera North have had an excellent year, with Peter Grimes an especially memorable production. I'm keen to see their Adventures of Pinocchio, which has a Christmas run in Leeds, featuring Victoria Simmonds cross-gendering in traditional panto fashion and billed as "the original bad boy". Jonathan Summers sings honest, put-upon Geppetto.
Across the Pennines, that magical story Tom's Midnight Garden plays at the Library Theatre in Manchester until January 12. It's the only book I have ever borrowed whose owner threatened me with death if I didn't give it back. It has that gripping effect. For all-out panto, there's something irresistible about Berwick Kaler's endless reign at York's Theatre Royal. This year he writes, directs and stars (as ever) in Sinbad the Sailor.
The Sage in Newcastle Gateshead has Willard White, Carl Davis and the Northern Sinfonia in a great big mushy Christmas concert on December 28. It's part of the twin cities' Winter Festival, whose programme is worth a detailed look. That's the unofficial capital of culture. The official one, Liverpool is the place to be on New Year's Eve when the city's big year is rung in by the cavernous Anglican cathedral's Great George, the highest and heaviest church bell in the world. Expect a complete reversal of Liverpool's civic motto: Deus nobis haec otia fecit - God has provided us this tranquility.
I intend to make my own jolly noise at Fountains Abbey, where the annual boxing day pilgrimage from Ripon Cathedral culminates in carols by garishly coloured spotlights in the monks' wonderfully stone-roofed refectory. Keep at the front of the walk, which leaves the cathedral around 10.15am after a service at 9.30am, because the mulled wine at the abbey tends to run out. Merry Christmas!
