Calhoun County Alabama Festival of Lights

When the evenings turn cold in east Alabama, one of the county’s largest parks switches its personality after dark. The Festival of Lights in Oxford turns Choccolocco Park into a drive-through Christmas light show, sending a slow line of cars along a mile and a half of glowing displays before visitors park up and walk into a village of skating, sliding and Santa visits. It is the City of Oxford’s own production, presented by the city together with First Bank of Alabama: the county’s signature after-dark holiday outing.

County tourism coverage sometimes calls it the Oxford Festival of Lights, but the official name form used by the event itself is simply Festival of Lights.

About the Festival

The Festival of Lights is a drive-through holiday light show staged at Choccolocco Park in Oxford, in Calhoun County. The city’s own description calls it a 1.5-mile drive-through adventure carrying more than 2.5 million twinkling lights across a 40-acre wonderland. This is not a show you watch from a bench. You drive it, slowly, and the displays are arranged to be read from a moving car at little more than walking pace.

Oxford hosts the festival, and the host town should not be confused with the county seat: Anniston holds that role in Calhoun County, while Oxford contributes the parkland and the production. The organiser of record is the City of Oxford. The city’s page states that the show is proudly presented by the City of Oxford and First Bank of Alabama, and that it is proudly sponsored by First Bank of Alabama. The festival’s own site keeps its contact address on the city’s domain and sends its job applications through the city, which underlines that this is a municipal production rather than a travelling show renting the park.

The second half of the festival is Santa’s Village, reached after the driving ends and the car is parked, where the emphasis shifts from looking to doing. Entry to the village is free, and the spending there is optional and itemised.

For a useful comparison, see the Calhoun County Alabama Firefly Festival for another county festival.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Festival name	Festival of Lights
Host city	Oxford, Alabama
County	Calhoun County
Venue	Choccolocco Park
Address	954 Leon Smith Parkway, Oxford, AL 36203
Presented by	The City of Oxford and First Bank of Alabama
2026 season	November 20 to December 31, 2026
Opening hours	Monday to Thursday 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Friday to Sunday 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Drive-through route	1.5 miles, with over 2.5 million lights across 40 acres
Car admission, 2026	Twenty dollars Monday to Thursday; twenty-five dollars Friday to Sunday

History

The honest history of this festival is a history of its recent seasons, because the official sources checked for this article do not publish a founding year, and none should be guessed. What the record shows is a light show with a reliable late-November opening and a closing date that has moved around from year to year.

The 2024 season, recorded in county tourism guides, ran from November 22 to December 24, 2024, closing on Christmas Eve. The 2025 season opened a day earlier in the calendar, on November 21, 2025, and ran considerably longer, through January 4, 2026, carrying the lights past New Year and into the first days of January. The 2026 season, the current one published on the festival’s official site and the city’s page, opens on November 20, 2026 and closes on December 31, 2026.

Read together, those three seasons show a festival still tuning its own calendar. The opening has crept a day or two earlier each year, while the closing has swung from Christmas Eve to early January and back to New Year’s Eve. Underneath the movement the pattern is stable: the lights stay on through the heart of the Christmas period, giving local families roughly six weeks of evenings to choose from.

The setting helps explain the appeal. Choccolocco Park is one of Oxford’s major recreational grounds, and the festival borrows that everyday parkland and re-dresses it: sports fields and open green space by day, a ticket line and a dark route by night.

What to Expect

The evening divides cleanly into two acts. The first act is the drive-through. After the ticket booth, drivers turn their headlights off and let the displays do the lighting, and every passenger must remain seated for the whole route. The 1.5 miles are lined with light displays spread across the park’s 40 acres, and the pace is set by the car in front, so the run feels less like a drive and more like a slow procession. Pets are welcome to ride along for this part of the evening.

The second act begins when you park. Santa’s Village is the festival’s walk-around core, and admission to the village itself is free. Inside, the headline attractions are outdoor skating and snow tubing, the tubing run built from real snow made using only water. Riders on the snow tubing must be at least forty-eight inches tall. Around those anchors sit Frosty’s Playground, further play areas, food trucks and visits with Santa, so younger children who are too small for the tubing hill still have plenty built for them.

Money inside the village works on a wristband logic. The major attractions require one: the all major attractions wristband costs twenty dollars, and each additional wristband costs ten dollars. Food and merchandise are extra. One practical quirk matters here: Santa’s Village is card-only, so visitors carrying cash exchange it at the front tent for Santa Bucks before they start spending. Dogs, meanwhile, have a clear boundary: a pet that happily rode the drive-through is not allowed into Santa’s Village, with service animals the only exception.

Planning Your Visit

The 2026 season runs from November 20 to December 31, 2026, and the clock changes with the day of the week. From Monday to Thursday the show opens at 5 p.m. and closes at 9 p.m.; from Friday to Sunday it also opens at 5 p.m. but runs an hour later, to 10 p.m. That single extra weekend hour, combined with the weekend price step, is the main decision a planner has to make: pay less and finish earlier on a weeknight, or pay more and linger on a Friday or Saturday.

Admission is priced per vehicle rather than per person, which rewards a full car. For the 2026 season a car pays twenty dollars from Monday to Thursday and twenty-five dollars from Friday to Sunday. A van pays thirty dollars on weeknights and thirty-five dollars at the weekend, and a bus or limo pays fifty dollars on weeknights and fifty-five dollars at the weekend. The official guidance defines the categories: a car covers up to eight people, every passenger in their own seat; a van carries nine to fifteen; a bus or limo covers fifteen or more.

Cash and card are both accepted at the gate, but the payment rules flip inside Santa’s Village, which is card-only, with the Santa Bucks exchange at the front tent for anyone holding cash. Drivers should also build the house rules into the plan: headlights off after the ticket booth, passengers seated throughout the drive-through, and dogs that rode along for the lights waiting outside the village unless they are service animals.

Because tickets are non-refundable and the show operates rain or shine, the sensible approach is to pick a night, commit to it, and dress for the forecast. Weekday evenings early in the season tend to be the calmest choice, while the final evenings before the December 31 closing carry the natural pull of a deadline. Arriving close to the 5 p.m. opening puts you at the front of the procession rather than in the middle of it.

A Sample Evening at the Lights

A weeknight visit might begin with an early supper in Oxford and an arrival at Choccolocco Park, at 954 Leon Smith Parkway, shortly before the gates open at 5 p.m. With the ticket bought and the headlights switched off after the booth, the drive-through itself fills the first stretch of the evening, a slow 1.5-mile loop of displays.

Parking up marks the halfway point. From there the evening turns on foot: an hour in Santa’s Village covers a skating session and a turn on the snow tubing for anyone tall enough, with a stop at the food trucks and a visit to Santa fitted around the wristband attractions. Cash goes to the front tent first, swapped for Santa Bucks, so nobody is caught short at a card-only till.

By the 9 p.m. weeknight close, the car is pointed home. Weekend visitors can stretch the same shape an hour longer, using the 10 p.m. close to take the village at a gentler pace.

Weeknights, Weekends and Seasons Compared

The festival offers two distinct versions of itself each week. The weeknight version, Monday to Thursday, is cheaper at every vehicle size and ends at 9 p.m., suiting families with school in the morning. The weekend version, Friday to Sunday, costs five dollars more per vehicle at every tier and buys an extra hour, ending at 10 p.m., which suits groups working through the village attractions properly.

Across years, the comparison is about the calendar rather than the content. The 2024 season was the shortest of the three recent runs, closing on December 24. The 2025 season stretched longest, the only one of the three to keep the lights burning into January. The 2026 season sits between them, opening earliest on November 20 and closing on December 31. Anyone who formed a habit in one year should check the dates afresh in the next, because the closing day in particular has not stayed still.

Planning Checklist

• Choose a weeknight for the lower price and the 9 p.m. finish, or a weekend night for the extra hour
• Load the car well, since admission is charged per vehicle and a car covers up to eight seated passengers
• Bring a card for Santa’s Village, or plan to swap cash for Santa Bucks at the front tent
• Check that snow tubing riders in your group measure at least forty-eight inches tall
• Budget twenty dollars for the first attractions wristband and ten dollars for each additional one
• Keep passengers seated and headlights off once past the ticket booth
• Leave dogs in the car plan only for the drive-through, since pets are barred from Santa’s Village
• Dress for the forecast, because the show runs rain or shine and tickets are non-refundable

Beyond the Festival

Oxford rewards visitors who arrive before dark. The city is one of Calhoun County’s main commercial centres, and Choccolocco Park itself is worth seeing in daylight before the displays take it over: a family can spend an afternoon in its ordinary open spaces and return in the evening to find the same ground transformed.

Anniston, the county seat, sits a short drive away and carries the county’s museum quarter, so a lights trip pairs naturally with a daytime visit there before the 5 p.m. opening in Oxford. The combination makes a full day of it: museum halls in the daylight hours, then millions of bulbs after sunset. For visitors travelling further, the festival works best as the evening anchor of a day spent in the county, because the whole experience is built around darkness.

Why the Festival Matters to Oxford

A light show might look like pure decoration, but its effects on a host city are practical. The festival gives families across Calhoun County a reason to drive into Oxford on December weeknights, evenings when a park would otherwise sit dark and quiet. It spreads that traffic across roughly six weeks instead of concentrating it in a single weekend, and it puts a municipal park to work in its least-used season.

It also gives the county a shared ritual. Free entry to Santa’s Village means a family can join the crowd and see Santa without spending anything beyond the drive-through ticket, and can choose exactly how much more to add. In a season when entertainment prices climb quickly, a city-run show with its prices published in plain tiers is a genuinely neighbourly piece of planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do drivers ever get out of the car, or is the whole evening spent behind the wheel?

Only the first half is spent in the car. The drive-through route is a stay-seated experience, with headlights off after the ticket booth, but once the route ends visitors park and enter Santa’s Village on foot, where the skating, snow tubing, play areas, food trucks and Santa visits happen.

Why does one car pay twenty dollars on a Tuesday and twenty-five on a Saturday?

The official pricing splits the week into two bands. Monday to Thursday is the cheaper band at every vehicle size, and Friday to Sunday costs five dollars more per vehicle, balanced by the later 10 p.m. closing on weekend nights against 9 p.m. on weeknights.

What is the Santa Bucks exchange, and who needs to use it?

Santa’s Village is card-only, unlike the entrance gate, which takes cash and card. Visitors who arrive holding cash exchange it at the front tent for Santa Bucks, the village’s own spending medium, so nobody is turned away for carrying the wrong kind of money.

Can a dog enjoy the lights too, and where exactly must it stop?

A dog may ride in the vehicle through the drive-through, which makes the first half of the evening a pet-friendly outing. The permission ends at the village gate: pets are not allowed inside Santa’s Village, and service animals are the only exception to that rule.

What to Expect From the Next Calhoun County Alabama Festival of Lights

How often is Calhoun County Alabama Festival of Lights held?

The lights return to Choccolocco Park every winter, opening in the second half of November and burning nightly through the Christmas period, so the show belongs to the dark weeks at the end of the year rather than to any single holiday weekend.

When is the next Calhoun County Alabama Festival of Lights?

Following the current season, which closes on December 31, 2026, the next edition would be expected in the following November, on the pattern the recent seasons have set. The festival publishes each season’s dates on its official site and the city’s page, and those announcements are the ones to trust, since the exact opening and closing days have shifted from year to year.

Will the dates change?

They have changed before, in small ways. The opening day moved from November 22 in 2024 to November 21 in 2025 and November 20 in 2026, while the closing swung from Christmas Eve to January 4 and back to December 31. Small movements of a day or a week are therefore normal for this festival.

For Oxford, the lights mark the turn of the year: a park full of colour in the darkest weeks, a village that costs nothing to enter, and a slow line of cars carrying families through 2.5 million bulbs. Pick a clear night, arrive at opening time, and let the procession set the pace.