Festival - Cincinnati Zoo Festival of Lights

The Cincinnati Zoo Festival of Lights runs from late November until just after New Year's Day and is open until 9:00 p.m.  Do try to see it before Christmas as that's when it's the best of all.

Despite the bitter cold, this was one of the most extraordinary evenings of our lives.  When your wife dashes to escape the cold to find warmth in the Insectarium, the Zoo's home to the strangest and most unusual insects imaginable, that's solid evidence that it really doesn't make any logical sense to be out in such bitterly cold weather.   Yet it's such a wonderful thing that cold doesn't deter anyone at all, even if the steps we took to warm up would have seemed, under any other circumstance, to have been a bit unusual!

Entrance to the Festival of Lights

You are now entering the Cincinnati Zoo Festival of Lights. These people ahead of you are walking away from the hot chocolate booth. They will most certainly be back!


Cincinnati celebrates Christmas in many ways and the Festival of Lights, a delightful tradition in which the Cincinnati Zoo is covered with lights, a million and a half of them or more, is one of the most memorable.  Maybe there are a hundred thousand more, maybe a hundred thousand less but, after the first million lights, who counts!

There's something particularly charming about seeing the Christmas light display while walking amid the Zoo's animals.  They're all making the sounds they usually make and that adds all the more to the feeling of the life everywhere around you.  This may sound a little peculiar but it's something you have to experience to really appreciate.

We visited the Festival of Lights for the first time this night in some years and were clever enough to pick a bitterly cold night to do it. We were most surprised to find that many other Cincinnatians had turned out for the Festival as well. It took a few minutes in the queue to get the car parked but there was surprisingly little crowding after we went inside.

All of the Cincinnati Zoo animal houses are open so you could drift from one to the next and enjoy the light sculptures along the way. It's really quite a lovely way to spend the evening and it runs from well before Christmas until just after New Year's Day.  Do see it before Christmas if you possibly can!

The Gazebo

This is a gazebo near the entrance to the Festival.  Ordinarily, one would hardly notice it except maybe for a short relief from a hot summer visit to the Zoo but from the Gazebo to every single plant, to the trees and the buildings, everything is covered with Christmas lights.  We have only just arrived and yet the awe of it is already starting to inspire us and everyone who passes here.

The Giraffe

Many animals were displayed as light sculptures. The doors to the Animal Houses were open so you could visit the real animals as well.  Celebration of the Zoo's animals in light is yet another wonderful way to see them as the displays are toward the feeling of the season but not without a sense of humor.

King Neptune

The close-up of King Neptune shows the incredible detail of the sculptures. While he was one of many extraordinary light sculptures in the exhibition, he was exceptionally charming as he may be the last one who would ever be associated with Christmas.  No kid is going to be expecting Santa to show up from underwater but in the spirit of the Festival of Lights it all makes sense, particularly when you see the next picture.

King Neptune and his Seahorses

Here are King Neptune and his seahorses. Christmas is celebrated a little differently underwater!

All this makes sense in the whole of the wonder in the Festival of Lights display.  Of course King Neptune has seahorses for reindeer.  How else could it be!

Lights Over the Lake

The trees around the lake have almost every branch covered with lights and this is only a small portion of the entire display. The ducks do not seem to be at all affected by the lights, the crowds, or the cold of the night. Look closely and you'll see some electric swans in the background.

The ducks don't seem to care about the cold but people rather enjoy it as the hot chocolate never tastes so good as when you drink it in sub-zero weather.  All the while, the feeling of the Festival of Lights and the happiness of everyone around you comes as close maybe as possible to what the Dutch call gezellig.  That's when something is so wonderful that you know it and everyone around you knows it so there's no reason to say anything.  Instead we smile at one another and know that the feeling is the same in us all.

The Candles

The feeling of Christmas is everywhere in the Festival and while you're walking through it the feeing comes that it really is all over the world.  The illusion is not in the Festival of Lights, the illusion is everywhere else.  The candles light us and lift us, all toward gezelligheid, the knowledge that it isn't an illusion and the love everywhere is real.  This is Christmas in Cincinnati.