The Oakdale Christmas House

Hidden gem. Open till Jan 3. Fee not required, but donation is welcome. My first time here and I think it’s pretty entertaining. Our family had fun and I don’t mind making donation. :)

3 stars for the strangeness and effort
I want to give this crazy place 1 star because it’s so creepy but 5 stars for how many lights and effort for setting it up. Doesn’t even matter if they keep a lot of it up year round. I hate putting up lights every year so I know their pain. For that, I even the place out at 3 stars. Every year we go here and I can’t help thinking of the movie ‘Nothing But Trouble’ (
). With all that being said, everyone should stop by this house. It’s free and quite unique.

We go here every year. It’s creepy and strange but we keep coming back. However this year there were no dolls hanging by their necks and no field of speared bears to the ground. However the crazy lights and crazy evangelical tv shows are still there. Check it out for a random night to get into the holiday spirit!

I would give it 4 if they expanded the walkway. Not only the biggest Christmas display I have ever seen (and growing), but the least expensive materials (ballin on a budget). Hence all the stuffed animals, dolls and odds and ends. This is Grandma’s attic on steroids, rave drugs, and a hit of the ray gun in upcoming sequel, «Honey, I multiplied everything by 29, for the love of Jesus.»
Don’t forget to donate to help with a $ 1200 power bill (and growing), additional plastic-​eyed pals, and the fact someone actually did ALL THIS on the good faith for the benefit of neighborly Christmas love.
To sum up my review, I tip my hat and say «Holy Shamoly!»

This is terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
There are a bunch of areas that are themed such a garden of teddy bears vines with Christmas lights. There’s a zoo with bleached and battered stuffed animals. There’s a fiber optic forest with one tiny fiber optic tree. There are animatronic dolls every where and Christmas lights for days and days.
The line moves relatively quickly, and luckily, you can escape the trail halfway through. Either way, you pass a massive model train track. The 700 Club plays on a TV while you’re in line, and there is Christian propaganda all over.
While mostly it’s creepy, it’s also captivating and worth at least one visit.

This place is pure Christmas vomit! I love trailer trash crap. this fact is well known to my co-​workers who dutifully informed me that if I truly love trash, I’ll love the Oakdale Christmas House.
I don’t get the stuffed animals. One large bear (?) has Busch Gardens embroidered on it. What does Busch Gardens have to do with Christmas? I asked a worker what they did with the stuffed animals when it rained and I was told that they have «umbrellas.» I’ll bet they do. Maybe this place could qualify for the world’s largest mold pit after a good rain. Can you even imagine the smell??? There are two large Tampa Bay Bucs football players. What do they have to do with Christmas? What does Dora the Explorer have to do with Christmas? There’s a bubble machine — bubbles and Jesus go together, I guess.
It’s like they just bought anything and everything they could lay their hands on, shoved a pole up its ass and stuck it in the yard. All the stuffed bears reminded me of Vlad the Impaler. Have a snowman — stick in the yard. I could go on and on but you get the point. This site has seen better days — would love to have seen it when it got HGTV’s award for Christmas lighting.
Instead of having a good time, I felt immensely sad leaving this place. I came home in desperate need of a good shower.

True – This place does seem to focus on quantity more than quality, but this Oakdale Christmas newbie still left impressed at all the hard work regular civilians were able to accomplish.
APPEARANCE AND VARIETY
Located in a regular neighborhood, this vomit of Christmas items comes out of nowhere. Yes – the first things you see are the Christmas lights – thousands of them! But there’s also a mish-​mash of many other displays both Christmas and not. There’s also a small walkthrough to see more displays up close (not wheelchair friendly)
It truly is a vomit of displays – perhaps even a hoarder’s dream. Some areas are cool like all the Christmas dolls, Nativity scene and large blow-​up snowmen, but most will leave you scratching you head. Is this Christmas display just an excuse to show off all the stuffed animals you’ve collected over the years?
SEVERAL WARNINGS
There’s a strong Christian Christmas theme throughout (I’m cool – bring that back!) but the television preacher show propped up on the rooftop was somehow creepy to me.
Speaking of creepy – there’s a few delicate dolls that may give imaginative kids (and impressionable Unilocalers) nightmares.
Ah well – I can’t be too picky because it’s a free walkthrough (I still donated) and all volunteers are very nice.

Rather than deduct a star for the horrifyingly cheesy and bizarre Christian themes at this display, I add one.
Hell, this place is a psychedelic nightmare covered in angelic vomit! Where to start? The TV mounted on the roof playing a loop of televangelist preaching? The forest of impaled teddy bears? Scary dolls straight out of a horror story? You have to see this to believe it!
Be prepared to wait in an almost hour-​long line. The best time to come is between 9−930pm when most family groups have already come and gone. Might only be 20 minutes at that time.
Far from «glorifying Jesus», in my opinion this display serves to make one terrified of Him. Which to me is pretty amazing.

If you want to know what this place is all about, just go. Just do it. The effort put in to the display, lights, descriptions etc. is evident. The people are really nice. They obviously want to help you find Jesus (which is fine).
But prepare yourself for the strangest Christmas display ever. Hanging Dora the Explorers, dolls in glass cases, dancing snowmen that turn and stare at you, etc. Everywhere you turn there is something random to see.
(What do they do when it rains??)
I had a dream that the piece of candy I got at the end turned me into a living stuffed animal that sang in the puppy section of their display for the rest of my life. Enough said.

This has been a Pinellas County Christmas season destination for decades. It’s truly a spectacular light display with over 600,000 lights burning brightly for everyone’s enjoyment.
Out of our group of eight, five had never seen this display. The two six year olds in our family enjoyed it the most, watching their eyes made the trip worthwhile. I think their favorite spot was the train display, also the bubble machine. For the adults in our group, stepping back and taking in all the beautiful spectacular lights that went into the whole display was amazing.
Last time we were here was 8 – 9 years ago. At that time I recall being able to walk more through the different displays. Also walking through the home. While I certainly can understand closing off the house. It was disappointing to not be able to venture through the winding sidewalks inside the various display areas.
Mr Kresge, his family, and helpers are to be commended for their time, effort, and expense of keeping this tradition alive for all these years (36). They even have folks helping with traffic and parking. Throughout this display, there are reminders of why we celebrate this season. Yes, there are snippets of scripture ever present, but at no time was there any preaching or apostatizing, just reminders of the true meaning of Christmas. This is a must see display IMHO

Wowwie wow! Super dooper xmas lights. We have been here two
Years in a row. It is one of our xmas traditions now. I wonder how the
store all this xmas stuff. It is a xmas hoarders dream come true. All in xmas spirit in fun.
This is a must see.

So I give this place 3 stars for trying since they have so many lights and spend a ton of money on electric bills. I went there last night and to say that it was really disappointing is almost an understament. I went to this place a few years ago when I was younger and I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but I must have been young and naïve. The place is full of old stuff! Unfortunately they have not been able to store their displays in a nice clean place. The stuffed animals are filthy, the inflatables are dirty, and overall just seems dirty (I feel bad saying this, but im just being honest). I don’t expect the owners to buy new things or anything but perhaps cleaning them and taking better care of them would make the display a lot nicer. Once you get there you walk around ¼ of the display, and the rest you see from a fence, which I thought was ridiculous! Why can’t we walk through the entire display? I don’t understand. All in all, the people spend a lot of time putting the display up and bragging about the good ol times, making this place a little bit of a disappointment. The light are nice, but you can see lights anywhere! I think that kids would still enjoy this, but I’m done going there. It was a long drive and definitely not worth it. At least not until they clean their stuff. They focus on quantity and I rather see quality.

In years past has ranged from «a nice walk» to «downright creepy» with nappy, dirty, waterlogged stuffed animals, inadvertently slowed-​down VHS tapes of preachers and old, worse-​for-​wear, creepy-​sounding speak ‘n spells. Last year (2010) saw some improvements in general condition of materials and their site (
) promises major changes for Christmas 2011.
It’s a ministry that puts this on, so expect scripture everywhere. Some stuff is neat, some stuff is «meh,» none of it particularly marvelous… and I do like tacky Christmas displays such as the drive-​through «Galaxy of Lights» display at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens we took in last year (in AL.)
Now, granted, that wasn’t free and this decidedly is. Bang for buck, this is the place to be. Personally? I’d rather pay a few bucks to have a more whiz-​bang experience, such as what we did last year. Trick is finding something like that in the Bay area.

It’s been on the Today Show, been written up in national newspapers and been seen by millions from around the world. Yet I had never heard of the Oakdale Christmas House until my friend took me by last night. I felt like a kid again, so stunning and jaw-​dropping opulent is this place.
Ted Kresge and his family began doing the lights modestly back in 1977 and each year they have more lights, toys and objects to their half acre home to make this truly a one-​of-​a-​kind spectacle.
Parking on the street was no problem and we walked up to the house, stopping to get a little flyer explaining about the home and decorations.
They use over 609,700 lights/​fiber optics, have over 700 movable objects and spend about $ 5000 in electrical bills (per month?). There’s definitely a Christian theme going on here with dancing bears quoting from Acts, dolls with placards touting Jesus and the most amazing manger scene ever.
It’s kind of like Disney World meets a Christian theme park.
They open the festival of lights the day after Thanksgiving and close down Jan.5^th so there’s still time to swing by and marvel at the sight.