FAIRFAX House will light up for a special Christmas evening of entertainment, shopping and wine on Thursday evening.

Every year, the 1760s' townhouse in Castlegate, York, dons its festive garb and is dressed from top to toe with Georgian decorations for The Keeping of Christmas.

This year is no exception, but 2015 brings a bonus: the Christmas Evening Extravaganza. As part of York's Late Night Thursdays, Fairfax House will be staying open on Thursday from 5pm to 8pm for a festive evening filled with 15 per cent discounted shopping for gifts, cards and antiques in the museum shop, twilight visits through The Keeping of Christmas and mulled wines and mince pies in the Georgian kitchen.

The sound of music will fill the house with carols and festive pieces from The Mount's School Chamber Choir, who will perform on the grand staircase.

Visitors can pop in "after dark" to wander through the period rooms decked with evergreens and decorations. A Christmas day breakfast will be laid out in the library with a massive Yorkshire Pie, cheddar cheese carved with a cross in northern tradition and other 18th century baked goods, while the grand central staircase and Venetian window are a focal point for entwined evergreens.

The dining room display is set with dessert and sugar-work table decorations, complemented by its latest creation, a Twelfth Cake by food historian Ivan Day. Here will be an opportunity over a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie to hear about Georgian festive traditions, what they ate and drank and how they celebrated Christmas.

Upstairs, the drawing room and saloon host a Nativity display and a Georgian holly Christmas tree, completely unrecognisable when compared to our present-day variety, and in the kitchen hangs a Kissing Bough, a sphere of evergreens with candles and a ring of apples.