City Park is about to get its glow on again. On Thanksgiving evening, Nov. 23, it will be time to flip the switch on the annual Celebration in the Oaks holiday light extravaganza.
A caravan of cars will begin crawling through the glowing landscape, families will stroll the elaborately decorated botanical garden, the miniature train will clatter on its tracks, and the carousel and other amusement park rides will rise and drop and spin.
Back in the day
Celebration in the Oaks has charmed visitors for more than three decades. Julie LaCour said the big lighted display debuted sometime in the 1980s, maybe ’87. But she’s not sure.
Nobody knows more about Celebration in the Oaks than LaCour. Originally from Atlanta, she moved to New Orleans in 1985 and stuck. “I loved it from the first day,” she said of her adopted city. LaCour started stringing bulbs for the winter festival as a Friends of City Park volunteer 29 years ago. By 2006, she'd become the park's full-time director of special events, including Celebration in the Oaks.
The reason LaCour can’t be certain exactly when the tradition began is that the archives of those early days were lost in the 2005 flood that followed Hurricane Katrina. As she recalls, an early version of the attraction was an afternoon display of decorated trees in the botanical garden, called something like “Ode to the Christmas Tree.” “It was kind of like an afternoon tea,” she said, “and it blew up from there.”
Julie LaCour, the director of special events and Celebration in the Oaks, has helped produce the holiday event for 29 years.
Turning on the lights
LaCour’s recollection is right on the money. According to issues of The Times-Picayune from the period, the large-scale holiday lighting display as we know it, first appeared in 1987. Though a smaller, less elaborate attraction had begun in the botanical garden three years earlier. The first official Christmas in the Oaks, as the event was then known, was sponsored in part by NOPSI, which contributed $55,000 in lighted decorations and $100,000 in services. The display reportedly featured 15,000 miniature lights. Admission to the walking portion of the display was $1. The driving tour was free.
The driving tour continued for years, until Katrina pulled the plug. As anyone who was around at the time can tell you, the levee failures during the big storm turned City Park into a dismal, gray wasteland. LaCour said the whole infrastructure for the lighted car route was ruined. But the City Park staff managed to find enough lights to decorate the walking tour in the botanical garden in time for the 2005 holidays.
Like so many things in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Celebration in the Oaks was a catharsis for returning residents. LaCour said she remembers people tearing up at the gates when it was time to come in.
The car tour came back in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, LaCour said. It was a natural way for families and friend pods to get out and drink in some holiday spirit while remaining socially distanced. LaCour said she’s happy the park was able to keep the car trail after the crisis passed, because it makes Celebration in the Oaks available to people who can’t easily attend the walking tour.
Families travel through light displays at City Park's drive-thru Celebration in the Oaks in New Orleans.
New designs and old faves
In a way, Celebration in the Oaks is like an art gallery of glowing sculptures made from strands of lighting attached to frames which are invisible at night. Over the years, giant toys, dinosaurs, candy canes, bugs, a pirate ship, snowflakes, alligators and ornaments have popped up in the park.
Evolving technology has brought major changes to the event, LaCour said.
The display has gone from old-fashioned incandescent lights, to LED rope lighting, to flexible neon RGB lighting. “You can twist and curlicue it,” LaCour said of the new yuletide tech, and it can be “programmed to twinkle, flash and change color,” which “produces all kinds of motion.”
LaCour said to expect some striking “ice thorns” to be jutting up in the botanical garden for the first time this year. And some old favorites are returning in 2023, including the “Cajun Night Before Christmas” and “Twelve Yats of Christmas” musical animated light displays.
Every display wasn't a hit. Years ago, LaCour said, she arranged to have a magnificent, 53-foot pine tree delivered to Celebration in the Oaks. It was erected by a crane, capped with a 6-foot fleur-de-lis, and lit with innumerable lights. It was billed as the biggest Christmas tree in the region, LaCour said. Trouble was, when you put up a big tree in City Park, people aren’t necessarily impressed, because “they just thought it grew there.”
Glowing dandelions are among the myriad light sculptures in the Celebration in the Oaks holiday display at City Park.
Raising money, raising spirits
LaCour said she pulls off the Celebration installation with just three full-time staff members, plus the help of outside contractor Nolan Beaver, whom she described as a lighting genius, and his crew. They get started setting up in late September, but try to stay low-key because people don’t really like to see Christmas decorations before Halloween.
She said she can’t quantify the number of lights in use. They’re uncountable. However, she said, she’s sure she and her people will go through 40,000 of those plastic ties that are used to attach the lights to their supports.
Celebration in the Oaks isn’t just sparkly; it’s important. The display drew 150,000 visitors last year and represented 13% of City Park's fundraising. It’s the park's No. 1 fundraiser.
For LaCour, Celebration in the Oaks is as sentimental as the holidays are supposed to be. “We put our hearts into this because it’s become a generational event,” she said. “You know that people who came here as children are bringing their own children, creating their own memories and their own stories.”
Celebration in the Oaks
- The attraction is open Nov. 23 to Dec. 30, nightly except for Mondays, and is closed Christmas Eve.
- Admission to the 30- to 45-minute driving tour is $40, with vehicles limited to eight passengers. Some Wednesday and Thursdays will be discounted to $25. Bike tours on Nov. 28, Dec. 5 and Dec. 12 are $5 and limousine tours are $150. The driving tour entrance is located at 4 Friederichs Ave.
- For those impatient with the typically long line of vehicles awaiting entrance to the popular attraction, the new “Celebration in the Oaks Dasher Pass” will allow drivers to “skip the line” for a $40 fee added to the $40 regular cost of admission.
- Walking tours are $35, with children under 3 feet tall free. Walking tours begin at 7 Victory Ave.
- Access to Carousel Gardens carnival rides is free with admission.
- Concessions are available, with free hot chocolate and marshmallows for roasting provided to all visitors.
- For information and tickets, visit the Celebration in the Oaks website.