Chickasha Festival Of Light Evokes Holiday Spirit In Oklahoma

Chickasha is home to one of our state's biggest holiday traditions, the Festival of Light. Each year more than 300,000 people from around the state and even the country come in to see the more than three million lights.

Chickasha's Festival of Light may be an Oklahoma icon, but it's really only a teenager, coming up on 19. And like a lot of teens, it tends to be not so tidy.

"Y'know when you look at the trees, they are messy," said Krist Davis, Festival Director. "There's a big glob of lights at the bottom of the base, and strands kind of everywhere, and it's not the prettiest sight."

Well it's better than it has been over the last couple winters.

"Over the last three years in the ice and the snow storms we've had, we've lost over 100 trees in the park. Two of those snowstorms have had our lights on 'em when we lost the trees," Davis said.

But you wouldn't know that today, or even tonight. And while the festival is less than 20 years old, you can't forget that it's really the granddaddy of all Oklahoma Christmas light displays.

"It is the oldest light show in Oklahoma, it was the original," Davis said.

And it brings in folks from all over. It's not unusual to see tour buses from Branson Missouri or even Las Vegas.

"And they talk about how they, y'know, this is so special and they can't believe that something like this is in such a tiny little town," Davis said.

These days there are numerous light shows across the state, but that doesn't bother the folks here. They say there are plenty of sightseers to go around, and plenty of new stuff for them to see.

"Because we're not in competition, we're all Oklahomans and we want people to come to Oklahoma to visit and spend money and bring tourism dollars in," Davis said.