Bethlehem, Pennsylvania plans to make this year's holiday season a 39-day festival of music, lights, crafts, children's rides and, especially shopping that will start the Friday after Thanksgiving and end with a performance by an acrobatic troupe the day after Christmas.

ArtsQuest President Jeff Parks announced initiatives that capitalize on Bethlehem's identity as America's Christmas City and expand its holiday offerings.

That begins with a new Web site, christmascity.org., that allows tourists to go to one Internet site to plan their trip. Christmas in Bethlehem will also be promoted by Pennsylvania's private marketing firm, which promotes tourism inside and outside the state, Parks said.

The holiday festival will begin on the day after Thanksgiving with a lighting festival, which for the first time will include the Central Moravian Church and other Moravian properties.

The Bethlehem Moravian community traditionally does not light its Christmas decorations until the first Sunday of Advent, which this year comes nine days after Thanksgiving. The church also plans to open its doors to tourists with a series of choral and pipe organ concerts featuring traditional Moravian Christmas carols.

Parks also announced an expansion of ArtsQuest's annual craft-oriented holiday market. Christkindlmarkt, which has typically opened four weekends starting the Friday after Thanksgiving, will this year have crafters selling items every day through Dec. 23.

The market will also be expanded to include four or five children's rides, an extra tent featuring a holiday water fountain show set to Christmas music and interpreters in historic Moravian costume giving tours of parts historic industrial quarter.