Dyker Heights Christmas Displays

Dyker Heights

Brooklyn

You wouldn’t expect tourists from France, Germany, and China to travel almost to the bottom of Brooklyn to see anything other than Coney Island in the summertime. Yet the Dyker Heights Christmas displays attract an astonishingly varied international set. When I went to visit the much-lauded displays the weekend before Christmas, I heard precious little English being spoken. Locals who haven’t checked out this amazing display of electrical drain should consider making the trek down the D-line before the end of the year. Hopefully, these displays will stay up for a few weeks after Christmas.

Sources are vague as to how the whole Dyker Heights lights thing got started, but it’s generally believed to have begun in the 1980s. I like to think it was an elaborate, expensive holiday version of keeping up with the Joneses. Indeed, most of the homes clearly demonstrate that this is not a working-class neighborhood: pediments, columns, fountains, and French-manicured shrubbery abound. Some of the most elaborate displays are professional jobs that cost up to $20,000. 

While there are pockets of homes with copious lights and large displays throughout Dyker Heights and Bensonhurst, the grandest are centered between 85^th and 80^th Streets and 11^th and 12^th Avenues. Some of the craziest homes are on 82^nd and 84^th Streets. 

Be prepared for large groups clustered around the grandest homes; there are even tour buses parked nearby. Also be prepared for screaming children, both with joy and with crankiness. I heard one bewildered three-year-old ask, “Mommy, why are we here?” I also got to watch parents encourage their children to trespass. Some homes have fences and dividers intended to keep viewers away from their front door, yet that didn’t keep one family from instructing their four children to duck under the garland rope to pose with a nutcracker soldier. I imagine the, “Corre, rapido, rapido!” was supposed to make it better. 

Not all of the displays are bright and cheerful, however. Several homeowners failed to take into account that under-lighting things makes them scary at night, even if they are Mrs. Claus or Frosty the Snowman. 

A home on the corner of 80^th and 12^th was particularly disturbing—the mechanics on the old figures didn’t work very well and the jerky movements only added to the frightening effects of the lighting. There were also some humorous instances of inflated displays losing too much air. 

Still, the area is much nicer to walk around than Rockefeller Center, which has but one measly tree. It is far less crowded, though not so much as to keep panhandlers in off-brand Sesame Street and Disney character costumes from earning buckets of cash by posing with tourists. Though, I don’t see what Elmo has to do with Christmas.