Holiday lights 2025: The 27 most stunning displays in the Bay Area

For many years, Tony Tran’s daughters begged him to hang Christmas lights outside their San Jose home. He kept saying, “Next year.”

Related Articles

Tran finally relented in 2018 and strung a few light strings. But his decorative ambitions really shot up to a whole new level when he, his wife and his then-teenaged daughters needed a family project during the COVID-19 lockdown. “My daughters said, ‘We can’t go out of the house, and we could put on a really nice display for the neighborhood,'” Tran said.

Since then, Tran and his family have joined the ranks of elite Bay Area holiday lights enthusiasts — individual homeowners or groups of neighbors who really get into the holiday spirit, a number of whom are spotlighted here in our annual list of the Bay Area’s best holiday lights displays