Lights Fantastic

The most spectacular Christmas light displays around Dallas this year

It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas before Halloween in some parts of Dallas, but fortunately, most folks waited until the Thanksgiving turkey was purchased to actually flip the switch on the yuletide decor.

There's nothing more fun than loading the family into the car, stopping for hot chocolate, and driving through neighborhoods to see holiday lights. Here are some of the best Dallas-area commercial and neighborhood displays.

Commercial displays

Holiday Wonder at Fair Park
This new event at Fair Park in Dallas features more than 2 million lights, bringing to life holiday favorites in giant illuminated displays. Those displays include winterscapes, floating swans, perennial holiday favorites (including Santa Claus), and more. The event also includes a two-story slide for kids and adults, a snowball throw with real snowballs, an acrobatics show, and more. The event continues through January 7.

Vitruvian Lights
Vitruvian Park has been transformed into a dazzling and magical holiday wonderland during Vitruvian Lights, when over 1.5 million sparkling LED lights are wrapped around more than 550 trees. The lights remain on every evening through January 1 and are free to view. Check the website for special events in the park.

Christmas in the Branch
Farmers Branch has been illuminated with half a million sparkling, flashing, and dancing lights for an animated drive-through tour. You’ll travel through a variety of different scenes, each with its own theme, from fantasy to patriotic. There’s festive holiday music, and the grand finale is an animated show starring Santa himself. The tour begins at Valley View Lane and Interstate 35, continues south on Denton Drive, and through the Farmers Branch Historical Park.

Light Show Spectacular
Go to Grapevine for the blockbuster Lone Star Christmas at the Gaylord Texan Resort, but stay for all the other festive events and displays around town. The popular Light Show Spectacular is a synchronized light and sound display at the Grapevine Christmas Tree. It's located next to the Town Square Gazebo along Main Street in historic downtown Grapevine, at the corner of Main and Dallas streets. This free, fun-for-all-ages lights show is about 20 minutes long and runs continuously from 6-11 pm nightly through January 7.

Enchant: The World's Largest Christmas Light Maze & Market
A world of Christmas wonder awaits as Enchant: The World's Largest Christmas Light Maze & Market makes its U.S. debut at Globe Life Park in Arlington. Guests can get lost in the world's largest light maze, take photos around the largest Christmas tree in North Texas, glide around the ice-skating pond, or waltz through the Enchant Christmas Market with over 85 vendors, including Arlington favorite Texas Christkindl Market Lane, now a part of the Enchant experience. The event will go on through December 31.

People Generation presents Magical Winter Lights
Magical Winter Lights at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie is unlike any other holiday lighting event to take place in the DFW area. The festival bases its designs from Chinese lanterns and transforms them into larger-than-life remakes of well-known landmarks. The lantern festival embraces more than just the Chinese cultural elements by also creating lantern designs that speak to the local audience. The 2017 festival features several themed sections including Magical Wonderland, Christmas Candy Land, The Lone Star State, Dinosaur Land, and Mystery of the East. The DFW Magical Winter Lights will specifically include an entrance castle lantern inspired by the Dallas County Courthouse, a giant cowboy, and Dallas’ iconic Pegasus.

Prairie Lights
Prairie Lights is a two-mile, drive-through holiday park experience, situated along the shores of Joe Pool Lake in Grand Prairie, that boasts a stunning display of more than 4 million lights and other holiday attractions. This year’s event, which runs through December 31, features live reindeer; dozens of all-new, holiday-themed light scenes; out-of-car experiences; and the park’s famous grand-finale animated tunnel that guests drive through upon exit. Featured events and attractions include the Holiday Magic Lighted Walk-Thru Forest, Snowmazing Snow Maze, and Holiday Village. Hint: Cut down on wait time with a fast-pass, available on the website.

Christmas in the Square
Frisco's Christmas in the Square features the largest choreographed holiday lights and music show in North Texas. Now in its 12th year, the event features a show with over 175,000 lights set to music. It also includes "snow flurries" every 15 minutes on Fridays and Saturdays, creating a winter wonderland even when the weather is not so frightful. While you're there, you can go ice skating for $10.

Neighborhood displays and events

Interlochen Holiday Lights
Arlington's Interlochen neighborhood consistently ranks high in national polls of most spirited areas with holiday lights. Each year, more than 200 homeowners go all out with extravagant lights, decorations, and displays that are worth the trek. This year is the neighborhood's 42nd to stage the free event, which begins nightly at 7 pm. Find the entrance at Westwood Drive and Randol Mill Road and make your way slowly along the winding roads of the neighborhood. (Note: You'll want to plan for long lines as Christmas approaches, as December 25 is the last day for the display.)

Deerfield neighborhood, Plano
In Plano, the Deerfield neighborhood hosts a holiday decorating contest that yields magical results: another top-rated winter wonderland you can walk or drive through. Deerfield subdivision is located between Preston Road and Coit Road. Enter from Legacy Drive, heading north on Colonnade or Archgate; check the website for maps and schedules. The free drive-through event lasts through December 30.

Highland Park
Perennial holiday favorite Highland Park shines with beautiful light displays, many of which are professionally installed; pick just about any street where you see houses lit top to bottom in twinkling lights, and there are bound to be a dozen more. Be sure to check out Highland Park Village while you're in the area. You can take horse-drawn carriage tours through the neighborhood, for a fee. Don't miss the town's dazzling “Big Pecan Tree” on Armstrong Parkway, just west of Preston Road. It is decorated with over 5,000 red, blue, orange, and green Christmas lights, and the lighting of the tree is believed to be the oldest Christmas tradition in Dallas County.

Kessler Park
In historic Kessler Park, you'll find lots of holiday lights on homes and trees against a backdrop of the Dallas skyline. A group of volunteers plan and coordinate the holiday decorations on various traffic islands in the neighborhood. From downtown Dallas, go west on Interstate 30. Take the Sylvan exit, turn south on Sylvan, drive about a half a mile, and turn west on Colorado. This one's so popular that limo tours are a thing.

Lake Highlands
In Lake Highlands, the 12 Days of Christmas come alive on Timberhollow Circle. The display has been a tradition for more than two decades. Each home is decorated as one of the days, from a partridge in a pear tree to 12 drummers drumming. Several residents have moved over the years, but they’ve passed along the decorations to the new homeowners to keep the tradition alive. The entrance is located one block south of Royal Lane off Abrams Road on Moss Haven Drive. The lights stay on through the end of December.

Vitruvian Lights in Addison.

Photo by Stevan Koye

Vitruvian Lights in Addison.

holidays families kids

pet protection

How to protect Texas pets against the dangerous New World screwworm fly

MPhoto by Tran Mau Tri Tam ✪ on Unsplash

Make sure these guys are up on their flea and tick meds.

Two New World screwworm cases in dogs are among more than 30 confirmed instances in Texas and New Mexico, prompting warnings Wednesday, July 8 from veterinarians and humane societies that pet owners need to remain vigilant to protect their animals.

The parasite reappeared in cattle in the U.S. in June, more than 50 years after it had been largely eradicated from the country. The pest is actually the larvae of the New World screwworm fly. It eats live flesh and fluids rather than dead material, as the larvae of most fly species do.

Here is what to know about the parasite, the threat it poses to pets and how to protect them:

Screwworm fly larvae can infest any mammal
The fly's migration north from Panama starting in 2024, and through Mexico in 2025, has agriculture officials warning that it poses a threat to the $113 billion U.S. cattle industry, but the larvae can hatch and breed in any mammal, including wildlife, dogs, cats and occasionally humans.

The problem develops when a female fly lays its eggs in open wounds and mucus. After the eggs hatch, the larvae feed for about a week before maturing, dropping to the ground and continuing to develop into an adult fly.

The American Veterinary Medical Association says newborn animals and animals with open wounds or who have undergone surgery or other medical procedures recently are especially vulnerable. Even a tick bite can host an infestation, Aaron Grady, executive director of the Houston Humane Society shelter, said during a webinar on the screwworm.

Screwworm fly close-up The goal is to stop these flies from successfully breeding. Photo courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife

Infestation signs include restlessness and bad smell
Animal health experts say pet owners in areas where the screwworm is present — southern and southwestern Texas and southeastern New Mexico so far — should watch their animals closely and examine them for wounds, cuts and bites regularly.

Pet owners should look for any maggots or movement in a wound. Other signs include a foul smell and restlessness or anxiety in an animal, or an animal “hyper-fixating on looking or chewing in a certain area of the body," said Melissa Stansell, a veterinarian at the shelter Austin Pets Alive!

Any one of those is reason enough to go to a veterinarian. The affected animal is likely in a great deal of pain, and that can cause death from shock. The larvae also can cause death if they move into vital organs or by causing infections that turn deadly.

Flea, tick medications can stop an infestation
Humane society officials and veterinarians said shelters across Texas are trying to prevent infestations in animals by giving them prescription flea and tick medications. They recommend that pet owners do the same.

“It will kill the larvae as they ingest the blood and tissue,” Stansell said. “The chemical compositions of those products are what kill the actual larval stages of these flies.”

Veterinarians also can treat infestations and animals can recover if pet owners contact them quickly. Stansell said the treatment could include antibiotics.

“It is only fatal if left untreated,” she said.

An effort to eradicate the fly again is underway
The New World screwworm fly is a tropical species and decades ago would disappear each year when colder weather arrived with the fall or winter.

But state and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials aren't waiting for the weather to turn. They've returned to an eradication method that worked decades ago, breeding sterile male flies and releasing them into the wild. The female New World screwworm fly mates once in her monthslong life, and if her partner is sterile, her eggs won't hatch — causing the population in an area to drop and then disappear.

For years, the only factory breeding sterile flies in the Western Hemisphere was in Panama, but the USDA invested $21 million to convert a site in southern Mexico from breeding fruit flies to recently start breeding screwworm flies. The agency also plans to spend $750 million on a new fly factory in Texas, set to open next year.

screwworm fly pets