Bryn Mawr's Saturnalia, the neighborhood's December winter festival, drew residents to Penn Avenue South for music, crafts and bonfires.

The Bryn Mawr Neighborhood Association's Saturnalia, the neighborhood's marquee winter event, ran Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, from 3:30 to 9:30 p.m. centered on 400 Penn Ave. S.. The afternoon-into-evening festival is the association's answer to the long stretch when the lakes freeze and daylight shrinks and many neighborhoods go quiet.
The 2025 program included snowflake crafting in the basement of Big Hill Books from 3:30 to 5 p.m., the Smiling Drum Corp and pianist Rod Gordon from 4:30 to 6 p.m., and RetroFizz jazz from 7 to 9 p.m. Greenhouse Salon hosted Santa visits with aura photography, Spruce Salon sold hot cocoa and merchandise and ran a local-artist pop-up from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m., and the event collected snowpants and winter-jacket donations for Bryn Mawr Elementary students. Participating businesses including Big Hill Books, Cuppa Java, La Mesa, Sundog Tattoo, Greenhouse Salon, Bryn Mawr Pizza and Deli, and Studio 411 offered promotions.
Saturnalia rounds out a year-round calendar that also includes the summer Ice Cream Social and Scoop-Off and the autumn Sip and Stroll, so the neighborhood has a gathering in every season. The off-season event is the hardest to pull off and, by the association's logic, does the most to keep block-by-block relationships from going dormant over a long winter. The name borrows from the ancient midwinter festival.

The East Isles Neighborhood Association holds its annual Summer Social on Wednesday, June 14, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Joanne Levin Triangle Park, with a rain date of June 15.

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Maya Lindgren
Covers Lowry Hill, the Wedge and the lakes.
The Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association reviews apartment and land-use proposals in the Wedge through its Community Development Committee, the volunteer-led forum where the neighborhood weighs in before projects reach the City Council.

Land use is the recurring flashpoint in Lowry Hill, a neighborhood of Victorian and Prairie-style homes where even a modest multi-unit proposal draws scrutiny under the city's built-form rules and the 2040 comprehensive plan.