Turkey day at Greenbrier

OVER Thanksgiving — 1,900 employees served 1,900 guests. In one lobby, 200 poinsettias. Outside, 11,000 acres and 100 holiday decorated trees. A single 46-foot spruce was dressed in 6,850 lights. Inside, a spa, a pool, a gym, a movie theater, a casino, a planetarium, shopping arcades, eight restaurants and — give or take a bed — 900 rooms. For half a century all is overseen, decorated and respruced by internationally celebrated designer Carleton Varney, whose talent has been seen in the Plaza, the Carlyle, the Waldorf, the White House. Straightening a chair, plumping a pillow as he walks by — is his VP, Brinsley Matthews.

It’s indoor and outdoor tennis, croquet, board games, mineral baths, a chapel, yoga classes, scavenger hunts, ice-skating, kayaking, mountain hikes, skeet shooting, white water rafting, bicycling, horseback riding, horse-drawn carriage trips. There are lectures, painting workshops, artist colonies, off-road driving, sleigh rides, Jeep-pulled trolley tours, horse barns, scavenger hunts, etiquette classes, cooking classes, balloon making, caricature artists, hand-created chocolates, whatever’s a turkey trail fun run. (Listen, don’t ask.) Also a 55,000-square-foot sports performance center, a 2,500-seat stadium, three football fields, a sporting club, a wedding chapel with handcrafted stained-glass picture windows designed by Varney. Additionally, there’s a museum, conference rooms, cottages for rent or sale and, attached, the diagnostic Greenbrier Clinic health facility.