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Bright Ideas: Drive-Through Holiday-Light Shows Are Twinkling All Across the State

Posted on: Friday, 23 December 2005, 09:00 CST

By Bill Hanna, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

Dec. 23--LINDALE -- There's Santa, there are elves and there is a religious section that depicts the life of Jesus.

There's also a tornado, a frog and a "tunnel of dancing lights."

It all makes perfect sense at Santa Land.

The giant Christmas display lights up the piney woods along Interstate 20 near Tyler, where 100,000 patrons are expected between Nov. 1 and Jan. 4.

And Santa Land, which bills itself as the first drive-through lights display in Texas, has plenty of nearby copycats.

There's one down the road near Canton, another near Marshall and a third to the south in Athens.

"We've got people that come year after year -- it's a tradition for them," said Pat Palmer, who runs Santa Land with her husband, Dwight, and her son, Wade.

"This is the kind of place where the kids come out in their pajamas and then go home and go to bed. They just come as they are."

These mom-and-pop holiday parks are a logical progression of the decorated town squares found in cities like Marshall -- and countless others across Texas -- said Fort Worth photographer Christina Patoski, author of Merry Christmas, America: A Front Yard View of the Holidays.

"You've got that Marshall thing where people are kind of aficionados of Christmas lights. You see the downtown thing and you want to go see something else," Patoski said. "I'm surprised how many there are in that one area of East Texas. It's definitely a small-town thing, something you don't see in the city."

Patoski is drawn not only to the multitude of lights but also to the heavy kitsch factor. She recently visited Christmasland, a park between Hallsville and Marshall, and was taken by the mishmash of styles.

"They had the weirdest manger scene where the Jesus doll didn't match Mary and Joseph," Patoski said. "They had a whole Galilee Sea of waves. They had Santa taking a bath in a clawfoot tub. It was fabulous."

To most Santa Land visitors, however, the lure is the chance to see 2 million twinkling lights draped through a pine forest. It's also a chance to pull off the interstate or get the kids out of the house. And they're more than happy to plop down $15 a carload for the tour. Last week, Katy Noffsinger and her daughter-in-law, Julia Morton, hopped into the car and drove about an hour from Caddo Mills, near Greenville, to see Santa Land.

"It's just wonderful," Noffsinger said. "I had been to one of these places in North Carolina, and this one is better. There's just more than I would have expected to be here. There's so much to see."

Her daughter-in-law said she was already planning to return next year.

"I'll bring my husband, who's stationed in Iraq," Morton said. "That's how much I liked this place."

The trend has spread beyond East Texas. Pat Palmer estimates that 20 similar drive-through parks can be found across Texas. The number varies each year as new ones turn on the lights and old ones go dark.

For the Palmers, the road to Santa Land was paved by necessity. Their oil-field-services business slumped during the 1990s, and someone suggested that they check out a drive-through park in St. Louis. After a visit, they decided their wooded farm would be a perfect setting for a park. They're in their 11th season, and Palmer says it's a year-round undertaking.

"We'll take a few months off, but we'll be back at it in March," Palmer said. "We're constantly updating it and replacing all of the colored lights."

Palmer declined to say how high the family's electric bill is during November and December, but she described it as "hefty." She said it takes "six or seven transformers" to power Santa Land.

Another Christmas-lights proprietor, Rebecca Rampy, freely admits that she got the idea for Celebration Park near Abilene after reading about Santa Land. Like the Palmers, the Rampys needed a new source of income when their pay phone business started to decline with the advent of cellphones.

While her drive-through park has plenty of lights, it has a different feel from Santa Land.

"Unfortunately, we don't have the beautiful pine trees that they have in East Texas," Rampy said. "We don't really have any trees out here, and the ones we do have are mesquite, and you can't really hang lights in mesquite trees. So we try to take advantage of the unique shapes and open spaces to build large scenes. We also have an indoor laser show."

Rampy estimates that her park will get about 30,000 visitors this year. The number might be much higher if they were located near the Metroplex. The Rampys have considered moving closer to Fort Worth but haven't found the perfect spot.

"If it were closer to Fort Worth and Dallas, it would be very profitable," Rampy said. "We've looked at Weatherford long and hard -- and we haven't totally given up on that idea."

That may be a good idea. Patoski thinks the Christmas-lights craze hasn't peaked. She said the parks provide something that many yard and corporate displays don't: a sense of originality.

"I'm always looking for some personal vision, not just taking it out of the wrapper and plopping it down on the ground," Patoski said.

Bill Hanna, (817) 390-7698 billhanna@star-telegram.com

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Copyright (c) 2005, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas

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Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas)

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