Mesa Temple again aglow in Christmas lights

Nov. 30—After a five-year absence, the brilliant holiday light display has returned to the Mesa Arizona Temple grounds.

The lights are on 5-10 p.m. nightly through Dec. 31 at the temple, Main Street and S. Lesueur in downtown Mesa.

The event — previously called one of the "must-see holiday lighting extravaganzas in the United States" — has drawn over a million visitors annually from across Arizona and beyond.

The lights have been turned off the last five years for the extensive renovation of the temple and its grounds that was completed last year.

"A team of nearly 100 dedicated committee members and hundreds of other volunteers from Mesa, Phoenix and Gilbert have made this event not only one of the largest known volunteer-driven Christmas lighting displays in the country, but helped to bring back a beloved community tradition since 1979," said Jennifer Wheeler, a spokeswoman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"Our mission is to humbly and worthily create sacred Christmas displays, in music, and lights, which reflect the beauty and integrity of the temple, inviting all people to feel Christ's Spirit," the committee's mission statement says.

Included in this free event are hundreds of thousands of lights, favorite Biblical displays, larger-than-life lighted wise men and their camels and a near life-size Italian Fontanini nativity figurines and stable at the northwest corner of the temple with a newly designed star, twinkling with thousands of white lights.

Nightly concerts were not included in this eyar's version of the display.

Across the street of the west side of the temple, at 455 E. Main St., the Mesa Temple Visitors' Center hosts a display of more than 150 international nativities from across the world.

Admission to the nativity display at the Mesa Temple Visitors Center is free and open daily 5-10 p.m.