How we build and verify this guide
This page exists because a listings site is only worth using if you know where its facts came from. Here is exactly how 1,334 displays across 496 towns and 25 states get onto this site, what we check, and what we compute ourselves.
Where listings come from
Every listing starts life in a published, editorial source — a local news roundup, a city tourism guide, a parenting or events magazine. We record the facts (name, address, dates, hours, cost, what makes the display notable) and write our own description. We do not copy source prose.
We deliberately do not bulk-import other people's crowdsourced databases. A community that spent years building a list owns that work. In July 2026 we dropped 222 entries from a single community database for exactly this reason, even though it cost us a metro. Individual facts corroborated across independent sources are fair game; wholesale dataset copying is not.
Readers can also submit a display. Submissions are reviewed before they appear.
What we verify
- Location. Every address is geocoded, then checked against the bounding box of the state it claims to be in. This gate has caught a cross-state mis-geocode in every single data batch we have run.
- Corroboration. We track how many independent domains list each display. 8 of our 1,334 listings are confirmed by two or more independent sources, and every listing page shows its count.
- Recency. Each listing carries the season it was last confirmed for. We re-verify the full database each October, before the season starts. A listing that cannot be re-confirmed is marked, not quietly left to rot.
What we compute ourselves
Most of what makes a listing here more useful than the article it came from is calculated, not copied:
- Sunset and full-dark times for 496 towns, computed per location for three dates in December. "Dusk" is not a useful instruction when sunset in the same country ranges from 4:12 PM to 5:33 PM on the same evening.
- Driving loops. For 112 towns with enough displays close together, we order every display into the shortest sensible circuit and estimate the mileage and driving time. No source article does this, because no source article has the whole map.
- Proximity. Every listing shows what else is within 5 and 15 miles, because almost nobody drives out to see one house.
- Practicalities. Parking, public toilets and somewhere to get a hot drink near each cluster, from OpenStreetMap.
- December climate normals from NOAA, so "dress warm" is a number.
What we get wrong
Residential displays are run by families, for free, on their own time. They change plans. Someone gets ill, or moves, or simply decides not to do it this year. Our dates and hours are the best information we have, not a guarantee, and we say so on every listing.
Driving estimates are planning figures: straight-line distances with a road allowance, not satnav routes. Sunset times are computed to within a couple of minutes, which is far more precision than the decision needs.
If something here is wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
How we make money
This site is free and carries display advertising. Nobody pays to be listed, and no listing is ranked, promoted or removed on the basis of advertising. See our privacy policy for how ads and analytics work.
Visiting residential displays
These are people's homes. Keep headlights dipped, engines quiet and music down, don't block driveways, don't park across neighbours' access, and take your rubbish with you. Several of the best-known displays on this site have been shut down in past years because of the traffic they attracted. If a display asks for a food-bank donation, bring one.