Candlelight tours of Victorian mansions, a stroll with Thomas Jefferson and a seven-course Colonial feast are among the pleasures awaiting traveling seniors this holiday season.

Though there may be no place like home for the holidays, there are places that combine the comforts of home with the joys of a getaway. No cooking, no cleaning up, no unsolicited phone calls. Seniors who need an escape from holiday chores will find glittering spectacles, old-fashioned festivities and lots of food conjured up for their enjoyment.

You pay for the pampering, of course. But the places and events listed here are within easy reach by car, bus or train. No worries about high transportation costs, flight delays and lost luggage.

Cape May, N.J.: America's first summer resort turns into a Christmas village with twinkling lights on every Victorian B&B.; The 29th annual self-guided candlelight house tours explore more than 40 decorated inns, homes, churches and hotels Saturdays Dec. 7, 14 and 28. Walk, or take the free heated holly-trolley. The $22 fee includes a visit to an exhibit of 100 teapots from an English castle at the Emlen Physick Estate. There's also a Taste of Christmas daytime walking tour Nov. 22-Dec. 27, followed by lunch at the Mad Batter Restaurant, $20. A three-day Dickens' Christmas package, which includes a Dickensian Feast at the Washington Inn, Dec. 8-10, is priced from $598.

Call the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, 800-275-4278, or visit www.capemaymac.org.

Newport, R.I.: The Vanderbilts and Astors won't be available to entertain, but there'll be musical evenings in the Gilded Age "cottages" to warm your heart this holiday season. New this year will be choral music, along with eggnog, sweets and cider, at the Elms Dec. 21. There'll also be traditional holiday music at the Breakers, Cornelius Vanderbilt's ultimate mansion, Nov. 30 and Dec. 7, 14 and 28. Grandchildren can meet Santa Claus in an elegant setting Dec. 8, 15 or 22.

Call the Preservation Society of Newport County at 401-847-1000, or visit www.newport mansions.org.

Old Sturbridge Village, Mass.: The solemn Puritans didn't celebrate Christmas in the early 1800s, so this museum village has cranked up the calendar to the late 1800s to bring you the kind of jolly holidays that were celebrated then. There'll be Christmas Memories programs Dec. 1, 7, 8, 14 and 15, with live performances by the Stagecraft Repertory Theater and a giant buffet of traditional New England fare at the Tavern at Old Sturbridge, $39.95 including tax and gratuities. Lodging packages that include admission to the village are available at the Old Sturbridge Village Lodges (no bookings for Christmas Eve). Admission for those over 65 is $18, good for two days, and you can bring Fido. Leashed pets are welcome only through Dec. 31.

Call 800-733-1830 or visit www.osv.org.

Colonial Williamsburg, Va.: You wake up in the morning and you're in 1774. The blacksmith, the tinsmith and the baker are already plying their trade. You breakfast in a Colonial tavern. Perhaps nowhere else is the return to America's roots so completely carried out as in this restored 173-acre 18th-century Colonial town.

There'll be nightly entertainment throughout the holiday season with traveling players and musical performances from classic to fiddling. It's worth at least one overnight stay to experience the full extent of the illusion.

Call 800-447-8679, or visit www.colonialwilliamsburg.com.

Rhoda Amon is a reporter for Newsday, a Tribune Publishing Newspaper.