we’re the more walkish type.
The best was seeing the Plaza lights from a small airplane about 25 years ago. I will never forget that.
We still drive around looking at lights weekends.
Heck, we just did it last night.
We have a reason – the people who live in western Saugus, MA are clinically insane every Christmas, and try to outdo each other in the number and density of lights. There’s one guy who’s been the hands-down winner every year, and who adds more lights every year. Every night there are cars lined up to drive by his house, people shaking their heads in awe and wonder, taking pictures and videos. Normally that won’t work with your average point-and-shoot, but this guy has so many lights that I’m sure they do come out.
I’d hate to see his elecric bill – his meter must be spinning like a top.
Besides the excess in west Saugus (and other communities), I highly recommend Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Instead of simply draping strings of lights on trees, as they do in most cities (se the Boison Common), the LDS Church has people individually wrapping strings of tiny colored lights around every branch of every tree in the Square. The result is breathtaking, and worth the trip.
But I think the guy in Saugus still has more lights per square foot than Temple Square.
When I was a young child and we visited my grandparents in New Castle, Pennsylvania, we’d be taken to Cranack’s (not sure of the spelling; I think it was a department store, but I’m not sure of that either; I was quite young) to walk through a decorated labyrinthine Santaland.
Later I remember being driven by my parents through the long and winding parking lot of a Presbyterian church in my hometown. Lights, but also the local youth group miming the nativity and jingle-belling a little too. That show is such a hit in my hometown that I even went back with my friends when I was a teenager. (Then again, there was never very much to do.)
Also as a teenager I would drive to piano lessons along Fairview Avenue, where the largeish houses were honing their one-candle-per-window aesthetic. It was cold and not very snowy, and I found it charming, and still do.
A few years ago in Seattle, I drove to Ballard to see a couple of the insanely decorated yards, but that was a bit much.
We always go check out The Miracle Block, so named because it’s 34th Street.
What’s nice about it is that all the houses on the street cooperate to put it together, and the decorations range from things like the hubcap Christmas tree to a model train that runs from someone’s house out into the front yard.
Christmas lights are not a kiwi thing at all. We have the christmas tree but that is about it. To the extent that the one street that goes all out has become attraction.
Like many Aucklanders will go and look at Franklin road but the only lights here will be on the tree.
After going out for dinner with my dad and grandma Wednesday evening, we drove around and looked at the lights for awhile. It was nice. Sometime this weekend I hope to drive to a nearby town where an 80-something farmer puts up thousands of lights each year at his farm. He puts up everything from a volcano and dinosaurs to a castle.
When I was little, my brother, mom and I would join my grandparents, aunt, unlce and cousins in my Pop’s Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser station wagon with the wood-grain paneling. We’d then drive about twenty minutes to Tower City, a small coal-region town with a disproportionate number of spectacular Christmas displays. We stopped doing it when we got older, but I tried going back after several years away. It wasn’t quite the same. Go figure.