Dad Life · Christmas
The Most Kid-Friendly Christmas in Central Arkansas — and Why Conway’s at the Heart of It
Conway didn’t start out as our Christmas town. It kind of snuck up on us.
It started when my kids started going to Sonshine, the gym here in Conway. Between classes and practices, I felt like I spent so much time here with the kids that I decided I should try and get a job here. So I did. And somewhere in all those trips back and forth, Conway stopped being the place we drive to and turned into the place our family does Christmas.
If you’ve got little kids, you already know the rules of a good Christmas outing. It can’t start too late. It can’t cost a fortune. And it has to survive a three-year-old’s attention span. Conway checks every one of those boxes. Most of the good stuff is free, it all starts early in the evening, and everything is close together. You can make a whole night of it, or spend twenty minutes driving around looking at lights and be home by bedtime. Some nights, that’s the win.
Every one of my kids has their own favorite part, and Conway somehow has all of them.
Emma, my oldest, likes the downtown Conway thing — the big tree at Rogers Plaza, the Ferris wheel, the train rides, Santa, everybody walking around. That’s the Illuminate celebration downtown, and for her, that’s Christmas: not sitting in the car, but being out in the middle of it.
Sadie is three, so she’s a car kid. She likes the lights and the blowups, driving around looking at them. Conway’s got whole streets for that — Tony Circle is a whole street of neighbors in a friendly arms race of lights and inflatables, and we slow-roll it with the windows down and let the kids pick the winner. When we want the big version, we point the car toward Morrilton or Sherwood and let her stare out the window.
Rhett is simpler. He just likes to see all the decorations. All of them. If it’s lit up and standing in somebody’s yard, Rhett is happy.
And me and Kelsey? Honestly, we just love the lights. Driving around looking at them together is our thing — it started long before this was a website.
But the one thing our family would protect on the calendar is Bethlehem Revisited at Antioch Baptist Church, out on Amity Road in Conway. All the kids have always loved it — they look forward to it every year. It’s a walk-through Bethlehem: live actors, animals, the Christmas story street by street. Everyone is so nice and kind when we go there. And the hot chocolate is definitely a big plus.
It only runs three nights a year — Friday through Sunday, December 4–6 — and it’s free. Tours run 5:30 to 8:30 PM, and you need to be in line by 8:30 or you’ll miss it. We get there before the 5:30 start. Put it on your calendar now, because if you blink, the weekend’s gone.
So if another dad asked me where to start around here, here’s exactly what I’d tell him.
Start with Bethlehem Revisited. Then, if your kids love the nativity side of it, make the drive to Searcy for the Searcy First Assembly Living Nativity — a drive-through Bethlehem with about 300 cast members, running December 4–6, 9, and 11–14, from 6 to 9 PM. It’s free, and they hand you hot chocolate while you wait in line. It’s the other one folks drive hours for.
For a pure lights night, go to Christmas in the Country on Nicholson Drive in Morrilton. A whole street of families has lit up their yards together for more than 20 years — thousands of lights, inflatables, a giant white cross and a towering tree, all made by the families themselves. It opens Thanksgiving night, runs nightly through January 1, and starts at 5 PM — perfect for little kids. And if you ever need a late one, the Enchanted Forest Trail of Lights in Sherwood runs November 27 through December 30 and stays open until midnight — a mile-plus drive-through, free, there for the nights nobody’s sleepy anyway.
Conway even throws in a parade — it rolls down Front Street on Saturday, December 5, at 6 PM, and downtown fills up fast, so claim your curb spot early.
That’s our Christmas. Nothing fancy, nothing far, and nothing that breaks the bank — just a town that showed up for my family, and a bunch of churches and neighbors who go all out so kids like mine can drive around wide-eyed.
Every one of these spots — with dates, times, and drive times from your ZIP — is in our free guide: lights.thatardad.com. Go make some memories.
— Chris Uting, That Arkansas Dad