McALLEN — Michael Bublé set the scene here at the McAllen Convention Center on Friday as his version of “It’s Beginning to look a lot like Christmas” began to play. The festive lyrics of the song welcomed guests as they walked into the colorfully decorated Oval Park.
These are the vibes pretty much every day at the South Pole of South Texas.
As one walks through the entrance of the McAllen South Pole Illuminated Festival they are greeted by lights that blink in multi-color holiday charm, decorating rows of trees along the side of the pond. The lights in the leaves changed Friday from blue to purple to yellow.
The McAllen South Pole Illuminated Festival, located at 700 Convention Center Blvd in McAllen, offers many such sights and sounds in the form of seemingly endless rope lights of blinking bulbs and holiday cheer from the beyond.
According to Yajaira Flores, director of convention facilities, this year’s festival includes a new addition that helps complete the theme: “South Pole and Beyond.”
That new addition is a tree of light.
“This year we incorporated something that’s new, which is the pixel lighting technology on our tree, which is 118 feet tall,” Flores explained. “It’s a fully immersive digital tree. It’s the tallest of its kind in America.”
The decorations at the festival began being installed in November and the festival officially opened to the public on Dec.7.
They include Santa Claus and his castle that glows blue and pink, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and just about everything else Christmasy that one can think of.
A red holiday train rides around Oval Park with Christmas lights decorating each cart.
But what separates the festival this year from previous years, and from many other similar holiday festivities, is the theme, which allows for out-of-this-world decorations including inflatable spaceships, aliens and other extra-terrestrial paraphernalia and gadgetry.
Basically, if you want to believe in Christmas, this is the place to be.
“We added a whole outer space exhibit,” Flores said. “You’ll start off by seeing a galaxy, the solar system, we have spaceships, we have astronauts, and yes we do have some aliens.”
Not only did they have space-themed decorations but this year’s festival also included an official NASA photo exhibit, which displayed photos of astronauts and their time in space.
Families stood beside the decorations taking photos of each other with smiles across their faces as they indulged in the festivities.
Attendees could also participate in festive activities, such as roasting s’mores and building gingerbread houses.
Although they’ve only been open a few weeks, Flores said that they have already passed last year’s attendance rate. Last year the festival saw over 130,000 attendees through the month of December.
“So far we have seen a slightly higher attendance than what we saw in 2021, which is exciting,” Flores said. “I think that each year our holiday exhibits grow and so we’ve seen a positive response in that respect.”
According to Flores the festival will be open to the public until Jan. 6.
Tickets for the festival can be purchased online at https://www.southpoleoftexas.com/ or in person at the ticket booth. The price of admission for adults ranges from $15 to $18, for children under 12 the entrance fee is $7 while children 6 and under enter for free.
To see more, view Monitor photojournalist Delcia Lopez’s full photo gallery here:
Photo Gallery: Winter Wonderland at the McAllen South Pole Illuminated Festival
