Every December, the same scene plays out on a residential street somewhere. A line of cars inches forward in first gear, kids fogging up the rear windows, parents watching the fuel gauge, all to spend four minutes rolling past a house that looks exactly like it did in the photos.
Holiday lights are one of the season’s genuine pleasures. The problem is that the most famous displays have become victims of their own reputation, drawing traffic jams, parking fees and crowds that swallow the glow.
Some are still worth planning around. Many are better appreciated from a well-timed weeknight, or from a quieter street across town.
Dyker Heights, Brooklyn
The homes of Dyker Heights put up some of the most extravagant residential displays in the United States, with inflatable figures two stories high and houses outlined in tens of thousands of bulbs. Some homeowners use professional decorators to create elaborate displays, while others handle the work themselves.
The fame now brings coach tours from Manhattan, and weekend evenings can turn the sidewalks into a slow-moving stream of visitors. The lights are wonderful on a Tuesday, while the crowd on a Saturday turns the neighborhood into a street festival nobody planned.
The Rockefeller Center Tree, New York
The tree carries around 50,000 multicolored LEDs and a Swarovski star weighing roughly 900 pounds, and it has been a Midtown tradition since the 1930s. The first Rockefeller Center tree went up in 1931, while the annual televised lighting ceremony began in 1933.
Police direct pedestrians through the area during the busiest weeks, and the plaza can become extremely crowded. The lighting ceremony itself is televised live, and most people in the plaza are watching through a sea of other visitors.
Go after 11 p.m., when the lights stay on and the crowd finally thins.
Candy Cane Lane, Woodland Hills
This cluster of streets in the San Fernando Valley has been decorating collectively since 1952, and it draws large numbers of visitors every season. Traffic can become heavy around the neighborhood, and local residents recommend parking and walking in when driving conditions are difficult.
The displays are cheerful and old-fashioned, with painted wooden figures that have been in some families for decades. It’s charming on foot and exhausting from a car.
McAdenville, North Carolina
The small mill town west of Charlotte calls itself Christmas Town USA and has been lighting up since 1956, when nine evergreen trees were decorated for the first celebration. Today hundreds of Christmas trees and thousands of lights cover the town along a roughly 2-mile route, drawing about 600,000 visitors during the season.
The display is lovely, but weekend traffic can turn the short drive into a very slow crawl.
Oglebay Winter Festival of Lights, West Virginia
Oglebay Park in Wheeling runs one of the largest drive-through light shows in the country, spread across about 300 acres along a 6-mile route. Its displays include more than 100 illuminated scenes and installations, with festive stops along the way.
Busy nights can bring slow-moving traffic through the park. Weeknights move faster and show the same lights.
Callaway Gardens Fantasy in Lights, Georgia
Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain has turned its woodland roads into a light show every season since 1992, with more than 10 million lights spread across a 7-mile scenic drive. You can drive your own car or ride a 45-minute open-air trolley, and both can be especially popular on peak nights.
The trolley is a slower, more social way to see the display, while driving gives you more control over the pace. Book a weeknight early in the season and the forest does most of the work for you.
Speedway in Lights, Bristol, Tennessee
Bristol Motor Speedway builds a drive-through route of about five miles and more than 4 million lights across 300 displays, and the finale sends your family car onto the steep-banked half-mile oval itself. That lap is a genuine thrill for racing fans.
The event can draw heavy traffic on popular nights, so earlier or weekday visits can make the drive easier. Proceeds support Speedway Children’s Charities, making the event a fundraiser as well as a holiday attraction.
Tanglewood Festival of Lights, North Carolina
Tanglewood Park in Clemmons, outside Winston-Salem, has run a drive-through show since the early 1990s along a winding route of about four miles. The show has grown into one of the biggest in the Carolinas, with hundreds of light displays and a gift shop in an old barn at the end.
Weekend waits can become lengthy, especially later in the season, with cars moving slowly toward the entrance. Midweek visits early in the season get you through in a fraction of the time.
A Country Christmas at Gaylord Opryland, Nashville
The Gaylord Opryland resort fills its glass-roofed atriums and outdoor grounds with millions of lights each season. In seasons when it runs, the companion ICE!
exhibit carves holiday scenes out of millions of pounds of ice and requires a separate ticket. Parking fees and admission prices for the resort’s various holiday attractions add to the cost, and the atrium walkways fill quickly on weekends.
The lights inside are part of the larger resort Christmas experience, while attractions such as ICE! carry their own admission charges.
Smoky Mountain Christmas at Dollywood
Dollywood hangs more than 6 million lights across the park in the Great Smoky Mountains and adds holiday entertainment and a nightly parade. It ranks among the most popular holiday events in the Southeast, and it draws heavily from the resort towns of Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg.
The Parkway through Pigeon Forge is often busy during the holiday season. Many regulars now visit on a weekday in early November, before the season’s peak.
Longwood Gardens Christmas, Pennsylvania
Longwood Gardens near Kennett Square spreads its display across outdoor gardens and a conservatory complex covering several acres under glass. Timed tickets are required and can become difficult to secure for popular December dates.
Inside, the conservatory rooms fill quickly and visitors move through them in slow single file. The display continues into January, so a later-season visit can sometimes offer a different pace without giving up the holiday atmosphere.
ZooLights at Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago
Chicago’s ZooLights has turned the lakefront zoo into a walk-through display since the mid-1990s. The current program includes designated free-admission nights, while other dates require tickets, making it enormously popular with families across the city.
Parking around the zoo is scarce and priced accordingly, and the zoo warns that traffic can become congested and parking difficult to find on busy nights. A cold Wednesday brings the same lights with space to see them.
Mission Inn Festival of Lights, Riverside
The Mission Inn is a sprawling Spanish Revival hotel in downtown Riverside, and its festival adds millions of lights and elaborate holiday displays to its towers and courtyards. The switch-on night draws a crowd large enough to close surrounding streets.
Parking and pedestrian traffic can become difficult during the busiest evenings of the season. The building’s arcades and bell towers deserve a slower look than the crowd allows.
Leavenworth, Washington
Leavenworth rebuilt itself in a Bavarian style in the 1960s, and its Christmas lighting festival is now so popular the town holds multiple lighting weekends during the season. Officials urge visitors to park in outlying lots and take shuttles in.
Reaching the town can mean crossing Stevens Pass in winter conditions, which can make the trip considerably longer when snow or ice affects the highway. Stay overnight midweek and the village can feel much quieter after the daytime crowds leave.
Newport Beach Christmas Boat Parade, California
This Southern California harbor has hosted a lighted boat parade for more than a century, with dozens of decorated vessels cruising the harbor over five nights before Christmas. Crowds line the waterfront and fill restaurant patios booked months in advance.
Parking near the harbor on parade nights is notoriously difficult. Watching from a less famous public spot along the route usually works just as well.
Regent Street and Oxford Street, London
London’s shopping streets hang some of the best-known holiday lights in Europe, and Regent Street’s canopy of illuminated decorations has become a seasonal icon. The pavements below are packed with shoppers from late November, and the crowds rarely look up.
The upper deck of a double-decker bus along Regent Street offers a better view. It also lets you see the lights without fighting the pedestrian crowds below.
Tivoli Gardens at Christmas, Copenhagen
Copenhagen’s historic amusement park reopens each winter with lights, market stalls and Scandinavian holiday decorations. It’s among the city’s biggest draws in December, and weekend evenings bring dense crowds.
Admission costs extra on top of many rides and attractions, and food prices inside can add up quickly. The lights around the lake at dusk are the best part, and the park’s quieter corners can provide a better view away from the main paths.
Christmas at Kew, London
Kew Gardens has run an illuminated trail since 2013, with light tunnels and projections along a route of about 3 kilometers through the gardens. Timed tickets are required, and popular dates can sell out.
The trail is long enough to take more than two hours, and the crowd can influence the pace. The walk ends near the Palm House, where major light installations and projections form part of the evening experience.
Getting home to central London afterward on a crowded train can undo some of the glow.
The Champs-Élysées, Paris
The avenue’s rows of plane trees are wrapped in lights from late November, creating one of the most photographed holiday scenes in Europe. The avenue and surrounding sidewalks can become crowded during the holiday shopping season, especially near the Arc de Triomphe.
The sidewalk shops draw heavy crowds, and the traffic around the Arc is famously chaotic. A slow ride down the avenue on a city bus gives you the view without having to fight the heaviest pedestrian traffic.
Huis Ten Bosch, Nagasaki
This Dutch-themed resort in Sasebo promotes its winter illumination as one of its signature attractions, with millions of bulbs spread across canals, windmills and replica Dutch buildings. It’s a long trip from most Japanese cities, and popular weekends can be busy on transportation serving the resort.
Much of the display is set to scheduled light shows, so crowds gather in the same spots at the same time. It’s spectacular in scale and not especially intimate.
Nabana no Sato, Mie Prefecture
Nabana no Sato, a flower park in Kuwana, is best known for a tunnel of light roughly 200 meters long. The winter illumination also includes large-scale light shows that change each season.
Weekend evenings can bring heavy crowds, particularly around the major illuminated displays and tunnel. Arrive before sunset, eat dinner nearby and explore the grounds before the busiest period begins.
Adderley Street, Cape Town
Cape Town’s festive lights switch-on has been a city tradition for more than five decades, drawing tens of thousands of people into the city center for a free concert and entertainment. Road closures and heavy traffic around the city center make getting in and out slow.
The lights stay up through the holiday season. A quiet evening walk later in the season lets you see Adderley Street without the enormous switch-on crowd.
The Glow Is Better Without the Gridlock
Holiday lights are built to be looked at slowly, and the most famous displays can become too busy for that. The traffic, parking fees and timed tickets add a layer of logistics that no string of bulbs can quite overcome.
The glow is the same on any night, but the experience isn’t.
A weeknight, a late hour or a smaller neighborhood display usually beats the famous one on a Saturday. Walk when you can, stay longer than you planned and look at the details.
The magic was never about the scale, and your own quiet street might prove it.
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