The Garden Awakens

The Garden Awakens is a game drop released on December 3, 2024, as Java Edition 1.21.4 and Bedrock Edition 1.21.50. It focuses on the pale garden, a biome that is home to the creaking alongside pale oak trees and pale moss. The first features of this game drop were revealed at Minecraft Live 2024.

In an official and publicly shared survey about Minecraft Live[1][2] and in file names on Minecraft.net,[3][4] the drop was referred to as the Vanilla Holiday Update. During development, it was referred to as the Winter Drop, the name of the corresponding experiment in Java Edition. The final name and release date of the update were revealed on November 27, 2024.[5]

Experimental features for the drop were released prior to the finalized release as part of Java Edition 1.21.2.