Let's Get Lit: Christmas Lights Tour with A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours

We love holidays. From Halloween through New Year’s Eve, we’re down with anything this incredible city can throw at us. And New York City? Well, FUHGETTABOUDIT! It’ll throw a little bit of everything at you, from the conventional to the kitchen sink. So when our friends over at A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours recently invited us to check out their Christmas Lights Tour, we jumped at the chance. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is a holiday staple in our household, we had to do it for the Griswolds.

"250 strands of lights, 100 individual bulbs per strand for a grand total of 25,000 imported Italian twinkle lights!"-National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Billed as “the most extravagant Christmas lights display in the country” (eat your heart out, Clark Griswold!), the tour covers not only the Brooklyn neighborhood of Dyker Heights (or “Dyker Lights” as it is affectionately referred to locally), but also surrounding neighborhoods such as Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst. As with all of A Slice of Brooklyn’s tours, the rendezvous point is Union Square. From there, you’ll be transported to Brooklyn in the comfort of a spacious bus while listening to Christmas music and watching old Christmas specials on viewing screens.

Years of holiday season mania has made us pseudo-experts, so for more fun ideas be sure to check out the best FREE things to do in New York City around the holidays! You'd be surprised how much fun you can have without spending a cent.

Once in Brooklyn, you’ll get to view decorated homes from the bus, but you’ll also get to wander the streets and snap pictures of the spectacular lights. It's a sure-fire way to light up your Instagram feed! The amount of walking is minimal, so it’s really suitable for all age groups (and in all types of weather, since the heated bus is never too far away!). Among the gems are the Spata house, where it all began, and Sammy the Greek’s three-story, Vegas-meets-Brooklyn, 300,000-light extravaganza. Since you get to visit multiple neighborhoods on this tour, you get to experience a really broad range of the spectrum, not just the extremes.

"Is your house on fire, Clark? No, Aunt Bethany, those are the Christmas lights." -National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Throughout the tour, your guide (Angela, in our case), will regale you with obscure facts, entertaining anecdotes, and general commentary--even offering to take that perfect shot for your annual Christmas card. One of the best features of A Slice of Brooklyn tours is that their guides have the inside scoop: they are Brooklynites through and through. Angela told us who lived in which home, what’s changed over the years, and even who’s inside the Elmo costume at the Spata house.

Spoiler alert: The person inside the life-sized Elmo costume is Lucy Spata’s nephew and he's collecting money for charity!

Each year, driven by a mixture of overdeveloped Christmas spirit and good-natured neighborly competition, the displays grow in size and complexity. More and more homes and adjacent neighborhoods get in on the act. For many, a visit to the neighborhood has become an annual tradition--to get ideas for their own displays, to see the newest additions, or just to get in the Christmas spirit. Indeed, if the Christmas Lights Tour with A Slice of Brooklyn doesn’t get you pumped for the holidays, nothing will.

“I still have a couple hundred more bulbs to check. Meantime, I can light the Santa...and the eight tiny reindeer...and the ‘Merry Christmas’ sign. That should look good.” -National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

Dyker Heights is such a big attraction that you can find trucks selling food and holiday trinkets parked throughout the neighborhood. But it’s important to remember that Dyker Heights is not an amusement park or a carnival; it’s an active residential neighborhood. Whether you decide to join a tour or go it alone, be respectful. Don’t be noisy. Don’t litter. Keep streets and driveways clear. Pay attention to parking rules and regulations.

We were horrified when, late on a Sunday night, we were passed by a tour group in which the guide (wearing gaudy reindeer antlers) was using a loudspeaker to play obnoxious music and communicate with his group. We're happy to report A Slice of Brooklyn's guides were consummate professionals.You can find out more about the Christmas Lights Tour at A Slice of Brooklyn's website here.

Thank you to A Slice of Brooklyn Bus Tours for partnering on this post.

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