Photo by Arina P Habich at Shuttestock
Ready to get into the Christmas spirit? Whether your family traditions include singing Christmas carols in the neighborhood, baking a gingerbread house, or if you want to soak up the holiday spirit, spend an evening checking out one of the many festive holiday lights displays across the country.
Driving around to view Christmas light displays is a time-honored tradition for many families. Viewing Christmas illuminations throughout the US is a popular pastime throughout our towns. Whether it’s a few simple lawn ornaments or thousands of twinkling bulbs in the night, holiday lights are a dazzling display for a time-honored tradition.
Some displays, however, are much more enthusiastic and have become attractions that bring crowds of people from all around the country to see their brilliance. Even though the holidays aren’t just about a light spectacle, it certainly helps enhance the magical, celebratory qualities that the season is so loved for.
So grab your hot cocoa and check out our 35 most dazzling holiday light displays in America…and be thankful you’re not paying any of those electric bills!
…Click “Next” below, and keep reading!
You can catch the drive-through Hershey Sweet Lights spectacular from the beginning of November until New Year’s Day at Hersheypark. Visitors can see nearly 600 festive light displays illuminated by around 4 million lights as they drive through miles of wooded trails.
Bring a toy or nonperishable food item and donate before seeing the 12-story-tall, light-animated Christmas tree at Duluth’s Bentleyville Tour of Lights. For the drive-thru event, you’ll find more than 5 million lights that are strung across the 20-acre Bayfront Festival Park.
Visit Bellingrath Gardens, where as many as 3 million lights and 1,000 set-pieces go into their Christmas display. It’s a 65-acre estate home and garden open to visitors all year-round. But from the end of November to the end of December, they host their incarnation of their Magic Christmas in Lights ceremony featuring hors d’oeuvres, hot chocolate, and musical entertainment.
Here’s one of those rare occasions where driving long distances to see a home’s holiday lights displays may be well worth it. Larsen Christmas Lights in Elburn is a large countryside home with stunning hour-long light shows that feature lasers, more than a million LED lights, 2,400 strobes, synchronized holiday music, and 10-feet-tall Nutcrackers.
The National Chain Group has been putting up a huge Christmas display for more than 40 years, and it just keeps expanding with lights and lawn ornaments which they add each year. The switch is flipped over Thanksgiving weekend, and the display is on from 5pm-5am through New Year’s Day.
At the Oregon Zoo, more than a million-and-a-half lights, many in the shape of tunnels or animated animals, take visitors through their annual ZooLights festivities. The whole family can experience seeing the lights Thursdays-Mondays, at 5pm, November 23rd until January 10th.
This festival might look familiar because it was featured in the 2017 film “Christmas in Mississippi.” Gulfport Harbor Lights Winter Festival features 1,200,000 lights, and visitors can walk through the festival or ride on heated trolleys that run back and forth from November 27th to December 31st.
Visit Hopeland Gardens in Aiken to see 2 miles of lighted pathways leading visitors through the walk-through holiday lights displays. On the grounds, you’ll see an area illuminated by more than 100,000 twinkling lights, and nearby businesses offer complimentary refreshments and seasonal activities for children.
The sun doesn’t really set in Fairbanks in the summertime, so when the winter solstice comes around on Dec. 21, Fairbanks locals do what cannot be done in July…they set off fireworks, obviously! The Winter Solstice Celebration also features live music and reindeer, as well as holiday decorations and light posts decorated with charming, lit-up snowflakes.
As many as 100 perfectly decorated Christmas trees donated by local volunteers reach for the sky of the State Capitol in Pierre. From November to December 26th, Christmas in the Capitol lets visitors stroll the light-strewn grounds, and afterward, you can go inside to see the public holiday lights displays from 8 am to 10 pm daily.
Glendale Glitters, the state’s biggest holiday lights displays, celebrate the season in 16 historic downtown blocks with 1.6 million LED lights, a 30ft Christmas tree, horse-drawn carriages, and thousands of visitors seeing how they sparkle. The display stays up until Jan. 11.
Obviously, the town of Santa Claus WOULD go all out for its Christmas season. What’s more surprising is just how unique its largest display, Land of Lights, truly is. Enjoy a drive-through outdoor tunnel of LED lights that tells the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer across 1.2 miles.
Charming towns throughout the Smoky Mountains celebrate Winterfest all through February 15th, with millions of lights twinkling throughout snowy town squares in Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and Sevierville. Here, guests can roam through grand displays outdoors or see over 5 million holiday lights as they cruise along Pigeon Forge Parkway.
The many shops and eateries housed in striking Spanish architecture at Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza turn on their tasteful holiday lights displays for thousands to see on Thanksgiving night. The area is known to keep its free festive displays lit until January 13th.
Sherwood hosts the Enchanted Forest Trail of Lights, a mile-long, drive-thru holiday lights display running from November to December 30th. Admission is free, though donations for future productions are encouraged…And everyone who comes gets a candy cane!
Head over to Austin’s Zilker Park area to see the nation’s most giant man-made Christmas tree, complete with 2 million lights and 41 unique displays. So grab yourself a timed entry pass. This year the trail will be a drive-thru event.
Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City is gorgeous when decorated with holiday lights that reflect on the park’s fountains and fallen snow on the 35-acre Temple Square. While here, look for a life-size Nativity scene, paper lanterns promoting “peace” in different languages, and the 70ft tall Cedar of Lebanon, covered with 75,000 red LED lights for the season.
Check out the Festival of Lights at Riverside’s Mission Inn Hotel, claiming many holiday highlights you wouldn’t expect in southern California, including fresh-fallen (artificial) snow and horse-drawn carriage rides. Four million lights, hundreds of animated figures, an enormous manufactured mistletoe, and festive offerings all go into the six-week holiday celebration frequently advertised as one of the country’s very best.
Winter Lights, put on by the Shelburne Museum, paint local landmarks in hundreds of lights for visitors to relish. The steamboat Ticonderoga, the Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building twinkling tunnel, and a lighted labyrinth are lit for three time periods between 5pm and 8pm on select days between November 27th and January 2nd.
See all the extravagant holiday lights displays around the historic city using the Richmond Times-Dispatch guide. Make sure not to miss unique homes like 6444 Little Sorrel Drive, which competes on ABC’s 2019 “Great Christmas Light Fight,” and 1411 Pennsylvania Ave., where a live Grinch shows up instead of the usual Santa.
The citizens of Keokuk create original displays for their annual City of Christmas light show at Rand Park. Until January 3rd, the drive-thru route winds through over 150 Toyland exhibits depicting a Nativity scene and Santa’s workshop, among others, decorated with about 1 million lights.
There are many homes in Billings that go all out for their holiday lights displays, so there are also maps made online annually to help visitors find them all. There’s also a “scavenger hunt” checklist of sights you can expect to see, among them a moose, a palm tree, the Grinch, and giant ornaments.
The historic Victorian mansions at the top of Queen Anne Hill near downtown Seattle are magnificent during December, when every corner is decorated with LED lights. End with a stop at Kerry Park to view the seasonal skyline, with cranes lit up, and a real Christmas tree is shining atop the Space Needle.
Though the state’s many mountain towns have plenty of gorgeous holiday lights displays, few can compete with the Denver Zoo’s Lights event, for which creative LED animal sculptures illuminate 80 acres.
In December, three hundred acres of the Wheeling Resort in Oglebay light up with 90 individual displays for the Winter Festival of Lights. It’s one of the nation’s largest and most visited holiday shows.
The Motor Speedway in New Hampshire gets a holiday alteration from November 26th to December 3rd. A drive-thru light display stretches over 2 miles and features the 130ft long Tunnel of Lights, 520 displays, and 80 different scenes.
Visitors can drive through the mile-long, snow-strewn Christmas Carnival of Lights at Jellystone Park in Caledonia. After passing more than 2 million lights decorating the forest, the route ends at a workshop where children can see Santa, adults can skim the gift shop, and both can enjoy some hot beverages.
The “Christmas City” in this state is Minden. A small town whose holiday season kicks off with the annual “Light of the World” pageant performed at the courthouse square the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The courthouse is beautifully illuminated with more than 12,000 bulbs, making the courtyard perfectly suited for the season.
See Cheyenne’s best city lights and home displays by the Cheyenne Street Railway Trolley, which offers annual holiday lights displays tours. Seasonally clad tour guides lead the trolley rides this year from December 12th to the 24th.
Christmas lights wind through the town of Great Bend for their annual Trail of Lights, where all the parks host unique holiday lights displays, many designed and built by the parks department employees. You’ll also find an ice skating rink and a miny Santa’s village for children.
This historic seaside town starts celebrating November 28th for their monthlong Vintage Christmas. It all starts at the city Historical Society with a kickoff party and gingerbread house competition. On select weekends in December, the grounds of Strawberry Banke Museum light up with hundreds of lanterns, and house doors and railings display handmade decorations true to the period.
In a former limestone mine, you’ll find the Louisville Mega Cavern. A unique attraction any time of the year, but especially for Lights Under Louisville, the world’s only fully-underground drive-through light show, featuring 3 million lights and 850 displays.
The nation’s oldest settlement ignites its historical sights with as many as 3 million lights for a long holiday season from November 14th to January 31st. Visitors will experience a Florida-style white Christmas by foot, boat, pedicab, or horse-drawn carriage any night for free.
…Want to know more about our nation’s oldest continuously occupied settlement? Check out: 12 Great Low-Budget Places To Visit In The US
There’s no shortage of iconic seasonal decor in Manhattan, but the Dyker Heights lights in Brooklyn may be the best. In the spirit of friendly competition, locals keep outdoing each other with beautifully coordinated, professional holiday lights displays. The best ones are found from 11th Avenue to 13th Avenue and from 83rd Street to 86th Street.
Baltimore has its own Miracle on 34th Street starting November 30th, when strings of lights span the festive avenue in Hampden and every resident decks out their home with unique holiday displays. Some are classic, featuring candy canes and nutcrackers, while others feature local icons like Edgar Allen Poe or Chesapeake crabs.
…Don’t see YOUR hometown on our list? Let us know why we should add it next time in the comment section below!
Also Read: Top 11 Incredible US Ski Resorts To Check Out This Winter
Add these budget-friendly winter road trips to your bucket list ASAP! As we approach the…
Check out these cozy winter lodges for a perfect cold-weather getaway! In the winter, we…
Check out one of these US hot springs before booking your next trip! Once the…
Check out these unique travel experiences for an incredible learning vacation! Looking for some inspiration…
You won't believe the forgotten ruins hiding under our streets! Sometimes, our nation's cities have…
These newly added UNESCO sites are begging to be on your travel bucket list! The…
View Comments
thanks all lovely we also have beautiful light displays in buffalo area
erie county fairgrounds downtown buffalo