With all the holiday light displays around town, were the star of Bethlehem to make an actual appearance above Tampa airspace, it might be tough to find in the sky. Area residents take their Christmas light displays very seriously, celestial events be damned.
Case in point — Ted Kresge's dazzling display at 2700 Oakdale St. (off Fourth Street South, just south of 22nd Ave), St. Petersburg. Every year, the half-acre residence is blanketed in a festival of lights (over half a million) and several hundred — yes, hundred animated religious figures. The spectacle takes several months to assemble, even with a team of volunteer designers, and Kresge foots an electric bill hovering near $3,500 — all to spread the Good Word.
But if you aren't in the neighborhood during the Kresge visiting hours of 6-10 p.m., you might try some other area displays. Across the Bay in North Tampa, a street called Hialeah gets in the community spirit with a neighborhood design featuring individually decorated houses connected by strings of lights running across the trees and from house to house. Makes one wonder if good will toward one's neighbors stretches to the energy bill. Try driving down the bright-as-day Hialeah with your own lights off for an otherworldly thrill.
On a smaller scale, the area around Interbay in Tampa wins some awards for cringe-worthy designs. Whether it's the plastic reindeer on south West Shore (three blocks south of Interbay), or the "Merry Mobile Home" (on Richard Avenue south of Interbay), these houses prove that holiday light displays don't need ostentation to be outrageous.
For walk-through fun, the park next to the Largo Library on West Bay Drive and Missouri Avenue in Clearwater has a pretty garden of lights, and "Operation Twinkle" in Dunedin is still going strong in Highlander Park, Dunedin Stadium, Edgewater Drive and at least 50 light poles dripping with decor in the quaint downtown square.
And if you still haven't can't get enough of holiday lights, you can follow the tradition that my family's been holding ever since I can remember — pile in the car, and troll the streets for some electric merriment. Visions of sugarplums, indeed.—Diana Peterfreund
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2002.