50 Gorgeous Holiday Light Displays Across America

Each winter cities and towns across America welcome the holidays with spectacular light shows that bring a sense of awe and wonder to the season. Search our definitive guide for some of the best holiday displays in your neck of the woods whether you love the simple magic of a beautiful illuminated Christmas tree or an entire jaw-dropping lit-up landscape.

The Lights of the Ozarks celebration in the historic downtown square of Fayetteville, Arkansas comes with hot cocoa, Santa and festive music to celebrate the holidays. Open until 1 a.m. every night of the week, the lights are free for all to enjoy.

The main entrance to the historic Mission Inn Hotel and Spa gets a glow up during the annual Mission Inn Festival of Lights event in Riverside, California which runs through early January. For over 30 years downtown Riverside’s Arts and Culture District is ablaze with millions of lights and enough food, shopping and activities to make a whole night of it in this event cited by the national press as one of the best holiday light displays in the country.

This Colorado town of Breckenridge really knows how to put a unique spin on the holidays with an annual Race of the Santas featuring runners in Saint Nick costumes, a Holiday Dog Parade with pups wearing their holiday finery and of course the town's downtown decorated with 250,000 golden glowing lights.

A night view at the Denver Botanic Gardens, where colorful holiday lights brighten up winter and the garden's plants, trees and shrubs during the Blossoms of Light event. For four decades the garden has played host to a dazzling display that becomes even more enchanting under a fresh layer of snow.

Nothing conveys the special magic of a seaside holiday like a towering tree composed of the traps that fuel New England's lobster industry. Each year Stonington, Connecticut hosts a special holiday display, a Lobster Trap Tree made of 460 traps and buoys illuminated against the night sky. Created by local children and professional artists, the Stonington Lobster Trap Tree is as much an artwork as a holiday display, so visit and enjoy it as both. Adding to the magic: each year numerous marriage proposals are made at the tree.

The Wilmington, Delaware Riverfront district offers visitors the opportunity for a holiday stroll along the scenic Christina Riverwalk at Holiday Magic at Riverbright where incandescent trees and archways deliver a surfeit of holiday spirit. Holiday shopping and dining are also on the seasonal menu so visitors can make an entire evening of it.

St. Augustine Nights of Lights features more than 3 million lights adorning every corner of this charming Florida city's historic district for two months. For more than 30 years businesses in the historic downtown have stayed open late for dining and shopping during the seasonal rush. Shown here: the top of the special event venue (and home to many weddings) Treasury on the Plaza framed by Christmas lights.

Billing itself as the city between Atlanta, Georgia and Chattanooga, Tennessee, Cartersville, Georgia is home to the Barnsley Gardens Resort and an annual holiday light show, Light Up the Holidays, that features over a million lights — including the ones decking Barnsley's town hall. You don't have to be a Barnsley guest to enjoy the holiday lights, but settling into a warm bed after a night of brilliant illumination sounds like a holiday treat in itself.

Feast on an incredible display of one million lights throughout the 30-acre Atlanta Botanical Garden in the heart of the city during Garden Lights, Holiday Nights. Along with a festive and fun musical soundtrack of synchronized light and sound at this popular event, there are s'mores, model trains and a spectacularly lit up Ice Goddess ornamented in icy shades of blue and white. You can navigate the garden with an interactive GPS map.

Honolulu City Lights began as a small tree lighting ceremony decades ago. It has since transformed into a glowing holiday spectacular that includes uniquely Hawaiian features like Shaka Santa and Tutu Mele statues. The event is full of small town charm with a parade of city vehicles and fire trucks decorated with festive lights and a celebration of the city with the perfect dose of local flair and pride.

A show that gets bigger and better each year, Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Annual Light Show lights up the Idaho sky with an incredible show of more than one million lights, a "Journey to the North Pole" lake cruise and a "Let it Snow" Christmas Show to immerse yourself even more in the holiday spirit.

On view until early January the Season of Lights at Indiana's French Lick Resort features half a million lights, two soaring seasonal Christmas trees and a chance for children to send their letter to Santa in the resort lobby for even more holiday magic.

Located — naturally — in Santa Claus, Indiana, the yearly Santa Claus Land of Lights display is a 1.2 mile drive-through light show. Billed as a "Family Christmas Light Adventure," this seasonal event is one of the largest holiday light shows in North America and features unique animated light vignettes, including a giant Rudolph and some displays as high as 30 feet tall.

The Spanish-inspired shopping district Country Club Plaza takes on a special glow during the holidays when this 95 year old tradition and spectacularly sparkly display takes over a 15 block radius of downtown Kansas City. Each year Kansas City Plaza Lights begins with an official lighting ceremony every Thanksgiving that includes fireworks to start the celebratory season off right.

The Christmas season is inaugurated in the 1780-founded Kentucky Bourbon Trail town of Bardstown, Kentucky with the lighting of the City of Bardstown’s spectacular Christmas tree. The historic downtown's transformation is completed with the lighting of lampposts, wreaths, stars and deer and the placement of a big red mailbox where children can drop their letters to Santa.

A stunning inside light display is a break from the neon of Bourbon Street for guests and visitors to the French Quarter's stunning luxury hotel, Roosevelt New Orleans. From the ceremonial lobby lighting display to charming traditions like a Teddy Bear Tea, the Roosevelt puts the old-fashioned luxe in the holidays.

Sparkling Christmas garlands with lights in the form of Christmas trees and other figures in the snow are featured at the Coastal Maine Botanical Garden Gardens Aglow driving tour whose scenes depict the flora and fauna of Maine’s forests, shorelines and meadows. The garden's mission is to connect people and nature and this annual event allows visitors to enjoy the season in a beautiful natural setting.

The seaside town of Kennebunkport, Maine has been called one of the most charming Christmas destinations in the country by HGTV and a host of other publications with its own special approach to the season in Christmas Prelude. The town square is illuminated with stunning lights for the holiday and Santa arrives each year via a lobster boat.

Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Maryland presents the Garden of Lights every holiday season from November through January. Illuminated with more than one million colorful lights, visitors can stroll through the 50-acre garden featuring dazzling nighttime displays of twinkling trees, fountains, animal shapes and hand-crafted flower designs.

This holiday lights display may only run across one block of Baltimore's eclectic Hampden neighborhood, but Miracle on 34th Street is a holiday lights spectacle like no other. For more than 70 years, neighbors living along 34th Street between Keswick Road and Chestnut Avenue keep adding to the holiday cheer with inflatable snow globes, musical trains, nativity scenes, and the kind of deeply quirky touches you'd expect from the town that gave us filmmaker John Waters. Make it a weekend by strapping on ice skates at the seasonal ice rink at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.

Night Lights: Dazzling Gardens in Boylston, Massachusetts is a crowd-pleasing celebration of festive lights and nature combined into one remarkable whole. To keep the crowds coming, the New England Botanic Gardening changes up the light display each year so visitors can experience illuminating new surprises.

Inspired by seasonal European markets, this Grand Rapids, Michigan covered Christkindl Market also boasts plenty of twinkling lights along with the food and fun to satisfy holiday goers in need of some seasonal sparkle.

Minnesota's Bentleyville Tour of Lights takes place at the Bayfront Festival Park. Located on the shores of Lake Superior in downtown Duluth, this Tour of Lights is America’s largest free walk-through holiday lighting extravaganza featuring more than five million dazzling lights.

Every year since 2015 Gulfport, Mississippi puts on a memorable light show and holiday event featuring carnival rides and, of course, visits with Santa on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

If you've seen the slow-burn professional gambling drama The Card Counter, where actors Oscar Isaac and Tiffany Haddish stroll through a winter wonderland, then you've seen the gorgeous annual Garden Glow holiday light spectacle at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, Missouri. The exhibit features more two million pulsing lights including illuminated flowers and fire flies. The Garden has added adults-only hours to the program with special cocktails, roaring fire pit blazes and the chance to enjoy the lights for a special date night.

There's an American town so full of the holiday spirit they call it Christmas City. Minden has become known as Nebraska's Christmas City for its tradition, started in 1915, of stringing lights from the railroad depot to the town square. Today the beautiful courthouse and town square light display can be seen for miles in every direction offering a beautiful nightly beacon.

Litchfield, New Hampshire is home to New England's largest holiday light display, a memorable, walkable light show held from Thanksgiving to January dubbed the Holly Jolly Journey.

A mile long drive-through spectacular boasting some two million lights, Augusta, New Jersey's Skylands Stadium Light Show also features carnival rides and a charming Christmas Village for food, shopping and plenty of family-friendly activities.

Millions of twinkling lights and 600 holiday displays define The River of Lights event at the ABQ BioPark Botanic Garden in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Visitors can sojourn on a 1.6-mile path where they can enjoy 700 one-of-a-kind hand-crafted light displays, animated and 3D sculptures and millions of twinkling lights.

Downtown Santa Fe is pretty spectacular any time of year but becomes even more magical during the holidays with special Southwestern-style farolitos offering a unique local spin on the holiday. At sundown each Christmas Eve there is a beloved annual tradition that dates back to Spanish colonial times called the Canyon Road Farolito Walk in which thouands of these glowing paper lanterns (just a small paper bag, a votive candle and some sand for stability) are displayed on this historic street.

Decorated with more than 45,000 white twinkling lights, this 55-foot-tall Norway spruce welcomes visitors to America's largest home as part of Christmas at North Carolina's grand Christmas at Biltmore event. In addition to that super spruce, more than 100 additional trees are decked out for the holidays with 100,000 twinkling lights at this magnificent holiday event that extends from the Biltmore house to the charming Antler Hill Village.

Dubbed the town where the West begins, Mandan is the proud host of The Mandan Holiday Lights on Main. This North Dakota tradition is a month-long holiday attraction featuring light displays to walk and drive through for a family-friendly experience that lasts into the New Year.

For 36 years the Ohio town of Clifton has celebrated the holidays with an unforgettable display of four million lights illuminating the town's historic water-powered grist mill, gorge, riverbanks, trees, bridges and even a 100 foot “waterfall” of twinkling lights.

A rollicking Midwest winter adventure, the annual WinterFest at Kings Island in Mason, Ohio combines an incredible holiday light display with fast and furious thrill rides.

The annual Festival of Lights event celebrated at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden has been going strong and bright for over 40 years offering 5 million "green" LED holiday lights. There is a sense of fun and wonder with special installations like a magical Fiona's Fairyland, an immersive Under the Sea display, larger than life animal lanterns throughout the park and a Wild Lights Show on Swan Lake. Good advice: dress for cold weather and bring a blanket.

The Tulsa Botanic Garden of Lights is the setting for illuminated garden pathways, thematic light displays and Christmas music each holiday season in this charming Oklahoma city.

Located in Silverton, Oregon the Silverton Christmas Market at Oregon Grand Resort features 1.5 million lights, an authentic German Christmas market, a Biergarten and a snowless tubing hill.

Bernville, Pennslyvania's Koziar's Christmas Village is a winter wonderland of one million sparkling holiday lights that turn the black countryside nights into a riot of color. An annual tradition that began in 1948 with a farmer, William M. Koziar, decorating his home for his wife and children to celebrate the holidays has since grown into a holiday spectacle that attracts crowds of both locals and tourists.

More than 5 million lights twinkle at the annual Hersheypark Christmas Candylane in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Inch your way by car through more than two miles of forest trails as you "ooh" and "ahh" at more than 600 animated holiday light displays. There are rides, nine live reindeer to see and holiday shows in the Music Box Theatre.

Sioux Falls, South Dakota is home to Winter Wonderland at the Falls, a dramatic light show that can be experienced up close, from the warmth and comfort of your car or seen from above in the five-story observation tower that gives a spectacular view of thousands of lights. This free event features 260 decorated trees and 338,000 total LEDs and lights.

The annual Lights Over Gatlinburg wintertime celebration is just one part of this Tennessee Great Smoky Mountains town's impressive holiday show, which also features Winterfest, Festival of Trees, Smoky Mountain Tunes and Tales, the Great Smoky Christmas Arts & Crafts Show, the Fantasy of Lights Christmas Parade and the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop and Fireworks show.

Like Las Vegas for children and lovers of extravagant holiday decor, Tennessee's Pigeon Forge in the Foothills of the Smoky Mountains celebrates the holiday with spectacular light displays including this one at the Inn at Christmas Place which, by the way, has a Christmas theme all year round.

San Antonio's famous River Walk is beautiful year round, but during the holidays it shines with a canopy of twinkling lights and is free for everyone to enjoy. Almost 125,000 lights cover every branch and bridge, and nearly 150 trees are illuminated along the riverbanks. The river's famous barges, which make hour-long trips down the channels, offer one of the best ways to admire the lights.

Park City, Utah's downtown becomes a charming festival of lights and fun during the holidays and features a unique electric parade where participants decorate cars, trolleys and even scooters with lights for a festive procession. There is an annual Main Street Snow Globe Stroll, Historic Park City Silver & Snow Holiday Window Displays and a Christmas Eve Torchlight Parade at Park City Mountain Resort, Mountain Village where skiers descend the mountain with flaming torches to celebrate Christmas Eve.

The Dominion GardenFest of Lights at the Lewis Winter Botanical Garden in Richmond, Virginia has something for almost everyone. Ongoing through early January GardenFest features more than half-a-million lights, botanical decorations, hot cocoa and s'mores, model trains and a host of family activities each evening.

To be considered a destination on Richmond's annual Tacky Lights Tour homes should have a minimum of 40,000 lights and feature the kind of spectacular (and excessive) holiday decorations and lights that will live up to this beloved holiday tradition's tacky name. Sponsoredf by the local Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper for 35 years, the tour can be seen on foot or through various companies offering guided light tours via limos or tuktuks so viewers can enjoy their light show in warmth and comfort.

Washington state's Village of Lights: Christmastown annual holiday celebration features some extraordinarily eye-popping and imaginative light displays in stunning shades of purple and red that are especially dramatic when seen against the snowy landscape. Every year the town of Leavenworth adds to that magical display with musicians and entertainment to keep people coming back for more.

Every year for the past 100 years Washington, DC celebrates the holidays by erecting the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse, south of the White House at President's Park. The tradition began in 1923, with President Calvin Coolidge lighting a 48-foot fir tree decorated with 2,500 electric bulbs in red, white and green. Each year, one-of-a-kind ornaments are made by Americans representing every U.S. state, territory as well as the District of Columbia.

An annual tradition in the town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia close to Baltimore and Washington, DC the Harpers Ferry Light Show features hundreds of thousands of twinkling lights, immersive holiday scenes and snow tubing for even more seasonal fun.