Freeport Maine and L.L. Bean’s Northern Light’s Celebration December 2025

It’s an annual tradition for our family to attend L.L. Bean’s Northern Lights Celebration. This year, our five-month-old puppy, Lucky, came along for the fun.

Every year our family attends the L.L Bean Northern Lights Celebration. It’s one of the activities we look forward to the most in December.  A quick Google search revealed that Freeport Maine advertises themselves as dog friendly to the extreme. There’s a plethora of dog friendly restaurants, stores and hotels. Freeport even includes a paw print on the map of their town with locations that are dog friendly.

I also found the website and app Bring Fido which will be handy on future trips to other spots too.

Dog Friendly Hotel ☑️

We stayed at our usual hotel this trip, The Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Freeport. We love this place and its easy walkability to downtown.  It’s a dog friendly hotel with an but there is an additional 75 dollar fee per stay up to four nights. We were staying two nights so that worked out to an extra 37.50 a night. They put us in a first-floor room with an easy exit door right next to us, which was quite convenient to take Lucky out to go potty. There was a small park with plenty of grass right outside this door.

We settled into our hotel and then headed to check out the L.L. Bean Northern Lights Celebration. Along the way we noticed many stores had a paw print decal in the window stating they were dog friendly.

L.L. Bean is currently under construction and due to this the Northern Lights Celebration was small this year. There were a couple of places to take photos but notably, the snow globe photo opportunity was missing! We were there on a Sunday so we could have met Santa, but the line was LONG and my kids had zero interest. There was free hot chocolate which we partook in twice and a projection show on the side of the L.L. Bean Tent. This is the temporary location of L.L. Bean while things are under construction. There was a big beautiful tree and a couple of fire pits with chairs with heated seats. And there were dogs. So many dogs.

Dog Friendly Stores ☑️

After checking out what the celebrations looked like this year and taking Lucky’s first photo with the L.L. Bean boot, we decided to head into L.L. Bean. I had read online that they were dog friendly, but on the door, there was a sign saying service dog’s welcome. We decided to bring him in and see what happened. We entered L.L. Bean and immediately received a warm welcome from an employee who was nothing but ecstatic to see our puppy. This was the trend that continued throughout our visit. We saw other dogs too.

We shopped, I found a Christmas gift for my husband and then we left L.L. Bean and headed back to our hotel. It was cold. It’s been real cold this December here in Maine and we were ready to warm up. We stopped at Island Treasures Toy Store along the way (also dog friendly with multiple employees happy to greet Lucky) and Lindt chocolate. I waited outside with Lucky because I read online there is no exception to allow dogs when food is served and honestly a dog in a chocolate store just seems like a bad idea. Finally, we stopped at Mexicali Blues so I could look around for a bit, which is also dog friendly.

Dog Friendly Restaurants ☑️

We returned to our the hotel and ordered takeout form Brick Yard Hollow. There are multiple restaurants in Freeport that allow dogs in their outdoor seating area (Brick Yard Hollow, Linda Beans and Tuscan Bistro to name a few), but it was 15 degrees out so that really wasn’t an option this trip. We would like to come back when it’s warmer and try it out though.

The next day we headed to Portland to do some errands. We stopped at Trader Joe’s for Christmas stocking supplies, another annual tradition. We traded off going in and waiting in the car with Lucky. Boys went first and girls second.

Errands done we headed back to Freeport where I requested a stop at the Freeport Community Services Thrift Shop. No one else wanted to go in so my family hung in the car with Lucky, but my guess is this place would have been dog friendly. This store was top five of all thrift stores I’ve been too. Lots of high quality treasures. The prices were a little higher than I usually spend, but not awful for the types of things they were selling. I spent 20 dollars and walked away with two sweaters and a sweatshirt, all of which looked brand new.

We headed back to the hotel where we watched a little television (holiday baking shows on Food Network are our current obsession right now) and relaxed. The original plan for dinner was takeout from Tuscan Bistro but we were tired and wanted something easy and quick. We decided to save it for a time we could fully enjoy the experience. We will test out it’s dog friendliness too! We ended up doing McDonald’s instead and it hit the spot. Sometimes something quick and easy when on vacation is good enough. And if you haven’t seen the McDonald’s in Freeport, you really should check it out. It’s an experience in itself. Due to the towns strict building codes and desire to preserve the historic look of the town the McDonalds is located inside a renovated 1850’s mansion. They even have special high end menu items like lobster rolls occasionally.

The next morning, we packed up and headed home.

Conclusion

After this couple of days in Freeport I would 100 percent confirm that this is a dog friendly town. This town and celebration is a great spot to bring your fur baby. Keep them on a leash, make sure they are being respectful and without a doubt they are welcomed at many stores, hotels and restaurants. We were quite happy how easy it was to include our new member of the family in our annual tradition.