Great holiday lights near Jamaica Plain/West Roxbury/Brookline MA
December 9, 2016 7:23 AM   Subscribe

Hello! I would like to drive somewhere within 20 minutes of Jamaica Plain MA and see some fantastic* holiday lights. Can you help? It would be amazing for this to be somewhere we could drive and park (or take the Orange Line T), then get out and walk, but I am completely open to just slowly driving through a residential neighborhood. A cluster of houses is better than just one crazy place, though if there's something really outstanding I'd love to hear about it!

*"fantastic" should be read as synonymous with any of the following (please specify which type of lighting display you are recommending): beautiful, striking, tacky, outlandish, ghastly-but-impressive, majestic.

Basically anything that makes you say, "Whoa, look at that!"

This will be happening early next week, so lights should be up already or likely to go up this weekend.
posted by Bebo to Grab Bag (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Do the Somerville Illuminations trolley tour. There are usually several jaw-dropping sights.

If you don't want to buy trolley tickets, you can also get a map of participating houses and do a self-guided tour.
posted by tentacle at 7:46 AM on December 9, 2016


Seconding tentacle; Somerville has so many they do trolley tours, though the tours are on the 17th [18th if snow emergency], so maybe not in time for you. They do make maps based on the state of holiday lights towards the end of the week prior to Illuminations, but again, probably not in time to be useful to you if your timing is set.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 7:59 AM on December 9, 2016


I used to live on Lexington Ave in Somerville, a street the trolleys visit. It's near Davis, so you could park at a meter, grab some dinner, and walk down the street. Halloween is also crazy there!
posted by veryhappyheidi at 8:31 AM on December 9, 2016


Response by poster: For those recommending Somerville, more info on specific streets would be super helpful (thanks for the Lexington Ave tip, veryhappyheidi)! This outing does need to happen early next week, so unfortunately the trolley tour/official map is not possible, but if you can give some hints of where the trolley usually goes that would be great!
posted by Bebo at 8:36 AM on December 9, 2016


There is a house in Dorchester that has been written about a number of times, its address is 392 Adams Street, that does an over the top Christmas light display. It is close to Neponset Ave. Here is an article that includes this house and other places to go.

Did you live in JP when the castle got lit on on the Jamaica Way? It was amazing, and annoyed many neighbors.
posted by momochan at 8:52 AM on December 9, 2016


The tour is sold out anyway; I tried buying tickets last week and they told me it had sold out within two hours!

There's an old post with the trolley routes on the Davis Square Livejournal community.
posted by marfa, texas at 10:35 AM on December 11, 2016


« Older Going inside the TP machine   |   Why am I being followed? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.