Christmas lights really have a way of making the holiday season extra merry and bright. And you don't even have to go through the hassle of hanging them yourself to enjoy their twinkling beauty. Luckily, there are plenty of stunning holiday light displays all over the country, just waiting to be explored.

Visiting one of these light shows is one of the best Christmas activities to share with friends and family because it never fails to put you in the holiday spirit—and best of all, it's often free! Start a brand new Christmas tradition this year by visiting one of the best Christmas light displays near you. We've rounded up the prettiest ones across the U.S., so you probably won't have to travel too far to check out at least one. (Plus, with all of your favorite Christmas songs playing, the road trip will be almost as fun as the destination!)

Our list includes all kinds of holiday displays, including light shows in botanical gardens, entire neighborhoods decked out in colorful Christmas lights, and even exhibits on race courses and amusement parks. Keep reading to find out more about the best Christmas light displays in the United States!

Koziar's Christmas Village is a family-owned Christmas attraction featuring more than one million Christmas lights. There are no guided tours so you can feel free to stroll the festive fairyland at your own pace.

The Garden Lights, Holiday Nights show at the Atlanta Botanical Garden shines bright this year from November 12, 2022 to January 14, 2023. New additions include a colorful Glowing Grove, oversized flowers, and several lighted sculptures.

The Festival of Lights at The Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in California is one of the country's biggest holiday light collections. It was even voted "Best Public Lights Display" by USA Today. Join the more than 500,000 people who visit every year and you surely won't be disappointed!

Tweetsie Christmas offers the unique opportunity to tour the attractions dazzling lights in a glowing, open-air train car. All aboard!

If you're in the Washington, D.C. area, you'll want to pay a holiday visit to Winter City Lights in nearby Olney, Maryland. It boasts more than 1 million twinkling lights across its sprawling 18 acres of land.

Kennett Square's Longwood Gardens is lit up with more than 500,000 lights for its annual holiday display. This year's winter wonderland features an elaborate outdoor light display, festively decorated trees both indoors and outdoors, not to mention holiday horticulture like poinsettias, amaryllis, and fragrant paperwhites.

Named one of National Geographic’s Top 10 Light Displays in the World, the Fantasy in Lights at Pine Mountain's Callaway Gardens features 8 million twinkling bulbs and is nothing short of spectacular. You can drive or walk through a forest of cascading lights and larger-than-life Christmas scenes featuring towering nutcrackers, gigantic snowflakes, and more.

The Chicago Botanic Garden's annual light display, Lightscape, is a 1 ¼-mile path of pure magic. Visitors will be treated to festive displays like the Winter Cathedral (seen here), laser light shows, and the Singing Trees. Plus, this year's event features even more new delights!

Brooklyn's Dyker Heights neighborhood is a beloved Christmas attraction for both locals and tourists. Each year, residents light up their homes with colorful bulbs, festive figurines, and fairy lights. The best displays are usually found between 11th and 13th avenues, from 83rd to 86th Street.

Every year at the holidays, the stunning Biltmore estate in Asheville transforms into a Christmas spectacle worthy of American royalty. During the day, stroll through the home and grounds to admire more than 100 hand-decorated Christmas trees, 25,000 ornaments, and 100,000 holiday lights. When night falls, experience the estate by candlelight and firelight, much like the Vanderbilt family did on Christmas Eve 1895 when Biltmore welcomed its first guests.

The annual holiday event at the Bronx Z0o celebrates wildlife with immersive light displays, animal lanterns, colored tunnels and arches, lit-up trees, and more. Animal lovers will enjoy more than 260 lanterns representing almost 70 animal and plant species—with even more lanterns making their debut at this year's show.

Just north of Los Angeles, you'll find the Enchanted Forest of Light at Descano Gardens, an interactive, nighttime experience featuring a one-mile walk through sparkling installations and lighting effects. This year, you can visit a new town of magical stained glass creations by contemporary sculptor Tom Fruin.

Be dazzled by 500,000 lights when the gorgeous Bavarian-style village of Leavenworth transforms for its annual Christmastown festival. The town also hosts lighting ceremonies, sleigh rides, Christmas carolers, and visits from Santa Claus.

New Orleans' annual Celebration in the Oaks is an incredible light display featuring more than one million bulbs throughout the 25-acre park of sprawling oak trees. In addition to the light displays, you can also enjoy a driving tour, amusement park rides, and a botanical garden.

Williamsburg's Busch Gardens boasts one of the biggest holiday light displays in North America, donning a total of 10 million bulbs for the amusement park's Christmas Town event. You can also learn how the colonists celebrated the holidays by visiting the park's Jamestown settlement.

Long regarded as offering one of the best Christmas light displays in the nation, Branson's 1880's-style theme park Silver Dollar City will be decked out in a whopping 6.5 million lights for its Old Time Christmas festival this season. Branson also boasts more than 1,500 Christmas trees, including a new community tree sure to dazzle with nearly 10,000 genuine cut crystals and more than 20,000 lights.

There may be no other small town as lovely at Christmas as historic Natchitoches, which has been producing its Christmas Festival of Lights for an astounding 95 years. For 45 big nights, Natchitoches glistens with 300,000 lights and 100 set pieces, while dishing out special celebrations aplenty, like the all-day Christmas Festival with its Mardi Gras-like Festival of Lights Parade.

Double the holiday fun when you're in the Mile High City by visiting two Denver Botanic Gardens displays: Blossoms of Light at the York Street location and Trail of Lights at Chatfield Farms in Littleton. The former focuses on fanciful light creations, including great glowing globes filling water features. The latter takes visitors on a one-mile stroll through light tunnels, singing Christmas trees, and more.

Founded in 1997 as a fundraiser for ABQ BioPark (a consortium that includes four separate facilities, including the city's aquarium, zoo, and botanic garden), Albuquerque’s River of Lights has grown to feature millions of lights and 600 holiday displays. Now the biggest walk-through holiday light production in New Mexico, it still raises money for ABQ BioPark projects.

Put the pedal to the metal and get over to the legendary Daytona International Speedway for Magic of Lights, one of the nation's finest Christmas light displays. During this thrilling 1.5 mile drive-through extravaganza, more than one million lights and high-tech digital animation help recreate beloved holiday characters and scenes, such as Joy to the World, 12 Days of Christmas, and Snowflake Forest.

Tacky Christmas lights on homes are a big deal in Richmond— enough so that companies including James River Transportation, Discover Richmond Tours, and Richmond Limousine all feature their own guided jaunts of the sensational sights. Or, you can always pull on your favorite over-the-top holiday sweater and sign up for the annual 6K CarMax Tacky Light Run.

Still going strong after more than 70 years, Miracle on 34th Street in Baltimore's funky Hampden neighborhood serves up row house after row house decked out with glittering lights. Annual tongue-in-cheek wonders include a Christmas tree decorated with hubcaps and a snowman made from bicycle wheels.

The stunning Christmas in the Capitol celebration kicked off in 1981 with just a dozen trees, but today features nearly 100 elegantly-lit evergreens gracing the historic rotunda and three floors of hallways. Keep an eye out for a wooden nativity on the second floor, thought to be well over a century old.

With architecture that looks like it was lifted straight out of an alpine village in Bavaria and elaborate holiday lighting to boot, it's no wonder the Lifetime movies Christmas Love Letter and A Taste of Christmas were filmed in Helen, Georgia. The display includes 8,000 lights gracing the town's Christmas tree, while another 250,000 outline the downtown's structures.

The Big Bright Light Show is exactly what the name describes: 1.5 million shining Christmas bulbs lighting up a four-block section of Main Street in Rochester. Founded in 2006, the celebration is now the biggest downtown Christmas light show in Michigan and a joy for the entire family to experience.

Known as the home to Dolly Parton's theme park, Pigeon Forge offers the spectacular Winterfest every holiday season. More than five million lights illuminate the six-mile Pigeon Forge Parkway, while some 80 attractions pitch in with their own displays. Don't miss the 40-foot-tall tree at The Island in Pigeon Forge!

There are more than 500,000 LED lights shimmering throughout Smithsonian's National Zoo in D.C. come the holiday season, but that's not all that delights at ZooLights. Look for laser light shows set to music, live musical performances, food vendors, and much more. Last year, the National Zoo took the event on the road, with a ZooLights truck that visited all of the city's eight wards.

A holiday fixture in the Pacific Northwest community of Stanhope since 1997, The Lights of Christmas wows with more than one million lights. The drive-though event traditionally features favorites like the spectacular Cascade Splendor mountain scene, the larger-than-life Nativity, and costumed characters like Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Gardens in the snowy season can have their own special beauty very different than summer's lush charms, and that's certainly true of Winter Garden aGlow at the Idaho Botanical Garden. Founded in 1997, when employees hung 2,000 strands of white lights around the property, the display now features 4,000 strands illuminating the Garden's walking path. Local food and drink vendors and a holiday photo booth selfie station also add to the good times.

This sweet little town in the heart of the Mississippi Delta boasts big lights come Christmastime. During 50 Nights of Lights 100,000 lights shine brightly through the downtown and local walking trail, with more than 350 holiday displays contributing to the joyful atmosphere. Cleveland also holds special holiday events some days and weekends during the celebration.

More than six million visitors have delighted in Springfield's Bright Nights at Forest Park since the event debuted in 1995, and with 675,000 LED lights on display it's easy to understand why. Dubbed the Northeast's biggest holiday lighting experience, the show focuses on famed folks from the area, like beloved Dr. Seuss creator, Theodor Geisel.

Sure, it'll be plenty cold—but the walk-through Bentleyville Tour of Lights in Duluth promises to warm hearts with a spectacular display, including a 128-foot tall tree festooned with nearly 600,000 lights. Admission is free and so are goodies like hot chocolate and cookies, but visitors are encouraged to bring a new, unwrapped toy or a non-perishable food item to donate to those in need.

Normally a walking experience, this year Gardens Aglow at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens will feature a driving tour through more than 600,000 lights, including themed areas and plenty of crowd-pleasing light tunnels. Other festive events in the area traditionally include the Lighted Boat Parade and Festival of Trees, both part of the annual Boothbay Lights celebration.

Dating back to 1802, the historic Clifton Mill is a beautiful sight all year round. But come the holiday season, when more than four million Christmas lights decorate the mill building as well as the surrounding gorge, falls and grounds, it is truly jaw-dropping. There's other fun to be had, too, like a live Santa tinkering in his workshop.

Nearly three thousand hand-lit candles and millions of Christmas lights wrapped around and hanging in sparkling sheets from trees and sculptures: This is the famed Nights of a Thousand Candles at Brookgreen Gardens. Be sure to sip some of the refreshments available and listen for the carolers and live music filling the night air.

Now in its ninth year, The Morton Arboretum's Illumination promises to provide a truly awesome spectacle for the whole family, with interactive lighting effects and sound design thrilling visitors as they amble down a one-mile walking path. The arboretum will also offer the chance to take the chill off with belly-warming drinks and s'mores of front of a cozy fire.

With a name like Santa Claus, you know this Indiana town has to have a fabulous holiday light show—and it does. Santa Claus Land of Lights tells the thrilling story of Rudolph and his shining nose in storyboards and thousands of lights over a 1.2-mile driving route. Highlights include three light tunnels, 300 light display pieces, and 11 giant story scenes.

It's hard to believe any Vegas light show could compete with what the Strip offers every night come sundown, but Glittering Lights manages to do just that. The drive-through event at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway is truly breathtaking, thanks to the millions of Christmas lights decorating the course. If you don't feel like getting behind the wheel, you can always hop aboard the open-air Santa Tram.

People come from far and wide to the Oregon Zoo's ZooLights—not only for the real animals but also the animatronic ones. Illuminated by 1.5 million LED bulbs, ZooLights is traditionally a pedestrian experience, though this year it will follow a hybrid model: Some nights will be walk-through and some nights will be drive-through.

You can do a good deed while touring a wonderland of more than one million Christmas lights at Greater Hartford's Holiday Light Fantasia. Benefiting the Channel 3 Kids Camp, the drive-though event offers 200 individual displays unwinding over two miles of Goodwin Park.

Young and old alike will thrill to the more than two millions lights that line the two-mile driving path of the Wisconsin Christmas Carnival of Lights through Jellystone Park Camp-Resort. Goodies include multiple themed sections, like the blue section featuring jumping sea animals, the candy cane section, and Santa's Workshop. Guests can also take a ride on Santa's Sleigh, a large, tiered sleigh pulled by a tractor through the show.

With a history dating back nearly 60 years, Austin's Trail of Lights now boasts some two millions lights illuminating the city's Zilker Park, 90 lighted holiday trees, and more than 70 other holiday displays and lighted tunnels. Other treats include an artisan market, carnival rides, and food trucks galore.

St. Augustine, the oldest city in the country, puts on quite a show during its Nights of Lights, when its historic buildings and greenery are outlined from stem to stern and top to bottom in more than three million white lights. Among the most show-stopping sights are the Plaza de la Constitución, which offers gorgeous views of the lights reflecting off of the water from the Bridge of Lions.

Grab the kids and head to Magic Christmas in Lights at Bellingrath Gardens and Home for an enchanting holiday experience that includes three million lights, more than 1,100 set pieces, and 16 scenes. The walking tour through it all takes about an hour to do, with tours of the lavishly-decorated Bellingrath home available as well.

Hersheypark makes the holidays even sweeter with a massive light display that includes the NOEL light show, featuring more than 250,000 lights dancing in time to Christmas music. But that's not all Christmas Candylane offers. Rides and coasters will be operating during the event, and Santa (plus all nine of his reindeer!) will dropping by for a visit.