These SC homes have the best Christmas light displays in the Upstate. Here’s how to find them
Kristina Hernandez has a job many people probably envy.
A writer for the website Kidding Around Greenville, she compiles the annual Christmas lights list.
It’s not clerical.
She drives all over the Upstate, checking out the recommended houses to be sure they’re as spectacular as described.
People start asking her for the list as early as September, she said.
“I tell them let’s get through the other holidays first,” she said, laughing at the thought.
The list is among the most popular features on the website, which was founded almost 10 years ago to help parents find all the cool and entertaining family stuff going on in the Upstate.
Hernandez said they’ve added a Halloween decoration list. Some of those houses are truly scary, she said.
But the Christmas lights, now, those are something to see. Many have 10,000 or many more lights. Some have areas people can walk through, blow up Santas and reindeer, you name it. One Greenville street — Earle— has matching inflatable Santas at various houses. Big ones. Hernandez says giant.
Ricci’s Christmas Lights in Pelzer has snow machines and more than 10,000 lights, synced to music from the Trans Siberian Orchestra.
A Victorian style house at 214 Bennett Street in Greenville is a “Hallmark themed Victorian style Christmas decorated house that will bring Greenville back into Dickens era,” Hernandez wrote on the website.
The Christmas House in Inman has been decorated by the Montgomery family for 50 years. Sandra Montgomery’s father started the tradition, which this year has grown to about 130,000 lights and other displays like the home for misfit toys.
Anthony’s Family Lights in Simpsonville has a musical light show and this weekend will be collecting toys for kids.
Hernandez said she’s been enthralled with Christmas displays since she was a child growing up in New Jersey in the 1980s. Her parents would drive her and her two younger brothers around their community in search of lights.
“Hey dad there’s one,” she remembers saying as they all snacked on the popcorn her mother made.
Pure family time. Pure joy.
This year, Kidding Around features seven communities with corresponding maps. Eight are featured on the Greenville route, including 123 Bennett Street, which has Santas, snowmen, elves, polar bears, snowflakes, and a Christmas movie playing in the living room window.
Four are on the Easley route, five in Simpsonville, seven in the Five Forks community, seven in Spartanburg, eight in Greer, four in Anderson and five that aren’t on any route but are worth the drive.
One of the only rules for being included in the list is that the house can’t be on a main road for fear of clogging up a busy thoroughfare.
The crush can be overwhelming, so much so that some well-known and spectacular displays have stopped decorating and people have contacted Hernandez to ask to be taken off the list.
Hernandez has one message for anyone driving around to experience the joy of Christmas decorations: Be respectful. These are people’s real homes, after all.
One woman told Hernandez she had turned off her lights at 10 p.m. one night and someone came to her door to ask why the lights weren’t on.
