Rotary Lights celebrates 25 years
The Rotary Lights have been a holiday must-see in La Crosse area for the past 25 years. The lights are an extravagant display of Christmas lights and decorations set up in Riverside Park, with different events giving the attendees the option of walking or driving through from the warmth of their cars. Aside from the 3,000,000 lights on display, the event also features live reindeer, musical entertainment, ice skating, carriage rides, an opportunity to meet Santa, and countless festive backgrounds for photoshoots. The event runs from late November until New Year’s Eve.
Not only does this event boost everyone’s holiday spirit, it also gives back to the community. The exhibition is free to attend, although they do ask for a monetary or food donation upon entry, which the Rotary club, that puts on the lights, then donates to local food pantries.
Patrick Stephens, president of the Rotary Lights, could not be more pleased with the event. He explains, “In 1995 we collected 13,000 food items and donated them all to the Salvation Army… now we’ve grown so that last year we collected over 340,000 food items which we used to support 14 different food pantries.” He goes on to say, “You get a lot of pleasure from it, to see what a difference it makes.” In addition to the food donations and after all of the expenses of the lights are paid, Stephens and the Rotary Club are able to return about $30,000 annually to the non-profits that help make the event happen.
Although Rotary Lights does have some classic displays that they do annually, such as the huge Christmas tree of lights above the entrance to the park, the small trees around the perimeter of the park do change from year to year. These represent each group that donates or contributes to the event, switching things up often enough to make every year new and exciting.
This year, for example, in celebration of Rotary Lights’ 25th anniversary, volunteers and the Rotary Club assembled a 50 foot automated tree on Grandad’s Bluff for the whole city to see. In addition to this, they are extending the days that the hayride and S’mores stand will be open, and they will be featuring a few new automated displays as well as a snow sculpture, weather-permitting.
The Rotary Lights are an event looked forward to by the residents of La Crosse and the surrounding areas every single year. They are a major source of joy and with over 3,200 volunteers and 111 nonprofits involved, it truly unites the entire community. As Stephens excellently states, “There’s nothing like the Rotary lights…It’s a lot of work, a lot of dedication, but the great volunteers just come out of the woodwork. We’re so fortunate to live in a community like this where people are so generous with their time.”