There’s no snow in Southwest Florida. Not a single glistening white snowflake.
So what’s a Christmas lover like Megan Allen to do?
The answer: Christmas lights.
Lots and lots of Christmas lights.
That’s what brings the North Naples mom and her 4-year-old twins to Bonita Springs’ Riverside Park on this recent Wednesday night. The park’s annual Holiday Stroll — one of many holiday light displays happening now all over Southwest Florida — is a must-see, she says.
Golden-white lights twinkle everywhere they look in Riverside Park: Spiraling up palm trees, streaming across the amphitheater lawn, shining from inside an oversized Christmas tree. All while a cool breeze blows through the park and “Here Comes Santa Claus” plays on the park’s sound system.
It’s all about finding the holiday spirit in a place where she and her kids have never once experienced a white Christmas.
“It’s hard to get into it because you’re like, ‘There’s no snow,’” says Allen, who moved to Southwest Florida from New Jersey. “So, it’s been nice to have a little taste of that Christmas spirit.”
There are hundreds of places just like this all over Southwest Florida: Beacons of holiday cheer shining in the warm Southwest Florida night with twinkling lights, glowing Santas and endless Christmas music. Many of those displays are featured in our annual holiday lights maps in The News-Press and The Naples Daily News.
Scott and Susan Siems of Marco Island put on one of those displays every year, packing their Sheffield Avenue yard with thousands of lights — 20,000 on the roof, alone — plus snowmen, Christmas trees and even an animatronic Bumble from the classic TV special “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
The couple moved from New Jersey to Marco Island in 2017. And like mom Megan Allen, they also missed the cold weather and the snow.
So they went ahead and made their own Christmas.
“We weren’t really accustomed to being warm during Christmas,” Susan Siems says. “And we just wanted to add a little more cheer.”
The Siems home and Riverside Park’s Holiday Stroll are just two of many decorated houses and businesses featured in our interactive holiday-lights maps. To see them online, go to tinyurl.com/47paued7 (Lee County) or tinyurl.com/4nnevvpp (Collier County). Or click on the embedded maps below.
The maps show holiday displays in Fort Myers, Naples, Bonita Springs and the rest of Southwest Florida. You can use them for a self-guided tour of the region’s best and brightest displays.
To get you in the holiday mood, here’s a closer look at four of the maps’ most awe-inspiring light displays in Southwest Florida: From Marco Island’s Sheffield Avenue to the 50th-anniversary Edison & Ford Holiday Nights in Fort Myers.
Marco Island homes go big for Christmas on Sheffield Avenue
Between the Siems and Hager families, Christmas is more than covered on Marco Island’s Sheffield Avenue.
Together, the neighbors put on two of the most impressive light displays in Southwest Florida.
“It’s fun,” Susan Siems says. “I really enjoy seeing the little ones come out and their eyes light up. They’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, look at all the lights!’”
There are certainly a lot of those. Tim Hager estimates they have about 35,000 lights. And across the street, Siems thinks they might have 70,000 in all — but she admits she’s not sure.
“We lose track,” she says. “We really have a lot of lights.”
The neighbors’ overflowing displays are a sight to behold for Christmas lovers.
The Siems have a snowman and winter wonderland theme, including a “snowman tree” with a snowman’s head on top, snowflake projectors shining flurries on the house and yard, and a family of snowpeople that represent Scott and Susan Siems and their three grown children, who often help set up the display every year.
Across the street, the Hagers have a passion for blow-molds — plastic, hollow decorations lit from within. Their enormous blow-mold collection fills their front yard, from gumdrops and lollipops to a 50-piece choir and a 12-foot “soldier tree” made up of 50 small soldiers.
“I just counted the other night,” Tim Hager says. “We have 479 blow molds in our display.”
His parents in Long Island had blow molds, too, he says. So he’s continuing that tradition in Southwest Florida.
“I always loved them,” he says. “It just has that vintage feel of Christmas to me.”
Another tradition he’s continuing: Raising money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Hager inherited a wooden St. Jude donation box from another popular Marco Island display — along with other decorations bought by the Hagers and the Siems — after previous owner Ron Spering closed his Whiteheart Avenue display and moved to The Villages in Central Florida.
“Ron does way too much good in the world for the tradition to die,” Hager says.
The Siems and the Hagers aren’t alone in their love for holiday lights, either. Their displays have also inspired their neighbors.
Now Sheffield Avenue shines with much more holiday cheer than it did just five or six years ago.
“When we started, there was only maybe us and one or two other houses that did any lights,” Hager says. “And now there’s probably 20 houses that do some level of lights. And it’s nice to see that Christmas spirit.”
Edison & Ford Holiday Nights celebrates 50th anniversary with Golden Jubilee theme
The annual Edison & Ford Holiday Nights is already a huge deal in Fort Myers. About 30,000 people show up every year to see the elaborate Christmas lights and decorations at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates, the former winter homes of inventor Thomas Edison and car manufacturer Henry Ford.
But this year is an even bigger deal than usual, says the Estates’ executive vice president, Mike Cosden.
It’s the 50th anniversary of Holiday Nights. And the Estates are going all out to mark the occasion.
That means more lights. More decorations, including new 25-foot-tall animated trees. And a gold color scheme to match the 50th-anniversary event’s theme: Golden Jubilee.
“It’s a pretty amazing opportunity,” Cosden says. “I feel like we’re really lucky to have this community tradition that we get to play a part in every year. And it’s really neat that it ties in so well with the legacy of our site, you know, with Edison and his contributions to electric lighting.”
Edison, himself, even had an event called The Golden Jubilee of Electric Light, way back in 1929. That event celebrated the 50th anniversary of the electric lightbulb, the invention that Edison perfected and made commercially viable.
That’s why “Golden Jubilee” made perfect sense for Edison & Ford, Cosden says. And that theme will be obvious to anyone who visits the Estates.
“So if you visit this year, you’ll see a lot of gold,” Cosden says.
That means thousands of Christmas lights colored gold, orange, yellow and white, everywhere you look.
“The things that people have loved in the past, we’ve tried to expand on them and do even more of them,” Cosden says about the 50th-anniversary display. “The biggest thing people have noticed is that it’s just more lighting. It’s just more this year.”
Just don’t ask Cosden how many lights.
He has no idea.
“I do not have an exact count,” he says. “Thousands of lights. Tens of thousands of lights.”
To learn more about Holiday Nights, visit edisonfordwinterestates.org/events/annual-historic-holiday-nights-celebration.
Bonita Springs’ Holiday Stroll brings Christmas spirit to Riverside Park
Farther south in Bonita Springs, the annual Holiday Stroll does Christmas right, says mom Megan Allen. That’s why she and her 4-year-old twins always drive up from North Naples to check it out at Riverside Park.
“We love it,” Allen says. “Bonita always does the best downtown stuff for the holidays. … I love that the kids can kind of run free through the park.”
She especially loves the softly glowing, golden-white lights all over the park. They make Southwest Florida feel much more Christmassy.
“It makes you think of snow,” she says.
The Holiday Stroll is a relatively recent tradition in Southwest Florida. It started in 2020, building on a previous light display at Riverside Park, says city communications and facilities director Lora Taylor. City officials added more lights, more decorations, nightly music, lighted street poles on Old 41 Road, and lots more.
And people loved it, says Bonita Springs Mayor Mike Gibson. At least a few hundred people show up every night to ogle the lights, listen to holiday music and watch their kids play in the grass or around the Christmas tree. That attendance goes up to about 6,000-8,000 for kick-off event Holiday in the Park, which featured a tree lighting, “snow slides,” school bands and more.
“It just gets more and more popular,” Gibson says. “Every evening you go down there and just see so many people hanging out and enjoying the lights and enjoying downtown.”
This year’s Holiday Stroll expands past Riverside Park with more displays across the street. The event also features some new attractions, including a reindeer-pulled sleigh so kids can pretend to be Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Nearby businesses take part in the fun, too, and decorate for the holidays.
City leaders have been trying to draw more people to downtown Bonita Springs, Gibson says, and the annual Holiday Stroll is one way to do that.
And he loves seeing them there, he says. “It’s just a beautiful sight.”
Bailey Hardy of Naples certainly agrees. She visited the Holiday Stroll with her family recently and watched her nephew play on that reindeer-driven sleigh.
The Holiday Stroll gets you into the holiday mood immediately, she says. Especially those snow-like golden-white lights. There are about 500,000 lights throughout the Holiday Stroll, according to Taylor.
“They did a really good job,” she said. “It’s beautiful. It’s festive. It gets the family together.”
To learn more about the Holiday Stroll, visit tinyurl.com/4dtk73xa.
Holiday lights in Southwest Florida: 10 of the best displays in Fort Myers, Naples area
Ready to get started with a tour of Southwest Florida’s best Christmas light displays? Here are 10 great displays in Lee and Collier counties from our 2025 holiday lights maps:
To see more light displays, go online to tinyurl.com/47paued7 (Lee County) or tinyurl.com/4nnevvpp (Collier County).
To add your own light display to our maps, visit naplesnews.com/holidaylights or news-press.com/holidaylights.
Charles Runnells covers arts and entertainment for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. To reach him, call 239-335-0368 or email crunnells@usatodayco.com. Follow or message him on Facebook(@charles.runnells.7), Instagram (@crunnells1) and X (@CharlesRunnells).
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This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Four must-see Christmas light displays in Naples, Bonita Springs area
Reporting by Charles Runnells, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Naples Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
