Holiday light displays near Boise, Idaho

Winter Garden aGlow at the Idaho Botanical Garden

The Idaho Botanical Garden's light show is the closest thing Boise has to a civic holiday tradition, now in its 29th season and hand-strung bulb by bulb by staff and volunteers across the garden's fifteen acres. You walk looping garden paths past themed stretches like the Candy Cane Forest and Gumdrop Grove, a community-built gingerbread house exhibit, fire pits and a couple of seasonal bars. It is the Garden's largest fundraiser of the year, which is part of why it costs more than anything else on this list and why the price moves around by night and by membership. Sunday nights and the last few nights of December are the discounted ones.

Christmas in Color at Roaring Springs

The valley's only real drive-through show, run by a Salt Lake City company that takes over the Roaring Springs water park parking lot each November. You stay in the car, tune the radio to their station and roll slowly through tunnels of colour synced to the music; the host park says the loop takes around thirty minutes. One ticket covers the whole carload, which makes it the best value here for a big group and the worst for a couple. Worth knowing that it moved from the Expo Idaho fairgrounds, so older directions and blog posts send you to the wrong place.

Winter Wonderland at Indian Creek Plaza

Caldwell lights its whole downtown rather than one site, and the result is the most ambitious free display in the region: lights over the trees, buildings and the creek bridges, a walk-through light tunnel, and a lit dragon arching out of Indian Creek. Indian Creek Plaza is the centre of it, with an outdoor ice ribbon that is charged separately, a singing Christmas tree, Santa visits and horse-drawn carriage rides. It also runs the longest of anything here, from the weekend before Thanksgiving into the middle of January. Downtown parking fills up on weekend evenings.

Lost in Christmas at Shindig Farms

A Nampa family farm that flips its eight-foot straw maze from Halloween to Christmas, wrapping the walls in lights and hanging illuminated canopies overhead. Getting lost is the whole point, and there are characters and photo setups hidden in the turns, plus zip lines, mega slides, a mechanical bull and horse-drawn wagon rides charged on top of admission. The farm prices each night by how busy it expects to be, so the calendar on their site is worth checking before you drive out. Of the paid options this is the furthest from central Boise.

Holiday Lights at Scentsy Commons

Scentsy decorates its Meridian corporate campus every year and opens the grounds to anyone, free, from a mid-November lighting ceremony until well after New Year. The signature piece is a 250-foot walk-through light tunnel; the paths loop past hundreds of lit trees and a 75-foot colour-changing tree. Because it is a company campus rather than an attraction there is no gate, no ticket and no staff on hand: the building is closed and portable toilets are the only facilities. It stays lit later into January than anything else here, which makes it the easy answer once the ticketed shows have closed.

The Village at Meridian

An open-air shopping centre that dresses its streets and Fountain Square for the season, with a big tree lit in late November and the fountain show run to holiday music. This is the most casual entry on the list: you are really pairing lights with dinner, a film or some shopping rather than making a trip of it, which is exactly why it suits a short outing with small children. Nothing is ticketed and you can wander as long as you like. Local guides all list it as a lights stop, but the centre publishes almost nothing about the display itself, so set your expectations at handsome decoration rather than a dedicated show.

Downtown Boise Holiday Tree at The Grove Plaza

Downtown Boise's holiday centrepiece is a 45-foot tree on the Grove Plaza, a gift from Boise Cascade that is lit at a free public ceremony with candles and live music, then stays on through the season. The blocks around it are decorated too, so it works as an evening stroll that ends in a restaurant rather than as a destination display. A vendor market runs on the plaza on Wednesdays through December. It is by far the smallest display in this table, and the one you are most likely to come across without planning to.