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If you think the holiday decorations at Rockefeller Center are impressive, then you’ve never seen the Christmas lights in Dyker Heights.
RECOMMENDED: Full guide to the Dyker Heights Christmas Lights
The weekend after Thanksgiving, the Brooklyn neighborhood transforms into a yuletide utopia, where homeowners and professional decorating companies adorn houses with over-the-top, kitschy inflatable snowmen and Santas, blast Christmas carols from loudspeakers and illuminate multiple avenues with breathtaking twinkly lights. It’s pure magic.
Most of the houses leave the lights on every night from 5 to 9pm through New Year’s Eve, so if you want to make the trek and Instagram the hell out of the experience next month, you’ll have multiple opportunities to do so. However, the easiest and warmest way to enjoy the Dyker Heights lights during the cold-weather season is to take a bus tour.
If you travel by foot and take the train, you will have to walk about 15 to 20 minutes from the subway stop before you reach the light display (11th to 13th Avenues from 83rd to 86th St). And the terrain is a bit hilly, so it might be nice to just sit back, relax and let someone else handle transportation for you.
A Slice of Brooklyn offers tours every hour from 6pm to 8pm, where a heated and comfortable bus picks you up from Union Square and takes you through a guided tour of the displays (both on wheels and by foot). Tickets are $50, and you better act fast—this event always sells out!
Here are some highlights...
A chance to explore other neighborhood Christmas light tours you didn’t know about (i.e. Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst)
A multimedia presentation including vintage Christmas variety specials
A visit to Lucy Spata’s house (the founder of Dyker Lights)
A 15-foot-tall Santa
Millions of lights, including some that are synchronized to music