Most holiday lights guides send you south, toward Nathan Phillips Square and the Distillery District. You do not have to go. If you live around Yorkdale, some of the best displays of the season are sitting a ten-minute drive away, or one bus ride up Bathurst. The catch is that these are mostly neighbourhood displays rather than ticketed attractions, which means the quality varies block by block. Some streets are worth the trip. Some are one strand of lights over a garage door. Here is how to spend your evening well.

Yorkdale and Lawrence Manor: Start Close to Home

The mall itself is the easy warm-up. The exterior plantings and the interior trees are done up every year, it is free to walk through, and it is directly on Line 1 — which matters if you would rather leave the car at home. Go on a weekday evening before the shopping crunch and you will have the place largely to yourself.

The better lights, though, are in the residential pocket west of the mall. Lawrence Manor is full of postwar bungalows and small two-storeys with wide front lawns, and wide lawns are what make a good display possible. The blocks between Bathurst Street, Lawrence Avenue and the Allen sit close together, so you can cover a lot of ground in forty minutes on foot. Look for the houses where the owners have gone past a wreath and a string of lights — those blocks tend to cluster, because neighbours copy each other.

Parking is the one annoyance. Street parking in Lawrence Manor fills up on weekend evenings, so park on the mall side and walk in, or take the 7 Bathurst or the 29 Dufferin and get off at Lawrence.

Bathurst Manor: Where the Whole Street Joins In

The stretch between Bathurst and Dufferin, roughly from Sheppard up to Finch, has developed its own decorating culture. This is where you find the synchronised music, the inflatable figures that take two people to install, and the houses where someone clearly started planning in October. Because the streets are quiet and the lots are generous, it works well as a walk rather than a drive — you see more, and you are not the fifth car crawling along at eight kilometres an hour.

A few things worth knowing before you head out:

• Give yourself an hour. Two or three good blocks easily eat that much time.
• Walk the odd-numbered side first and loop back; you will catch displays you missed from the other direction.
• Bring a thermos and a small flashlight. Sidewalks get icy, and not every stretch is well lit.
• Leave the dog at home if it does not handle crowds well. Weekends here get busy.
• Stay on the sidewalk and off the lawns, no matter how good the photo would be.

North York Centre: The Densest Cluster Near a Subway

If you want the biggest payoff for the least walking, ride Line 1 to North York Centre or Sheppard-Yonge and work your way along Yonge between Sheppard and Finch. Mel Lastman Square and the surrounding civic buildings get proper municipal decorating, the square has a rink that stays busy through the holidays, and the condo towers along Yonge do a surprisingly good job with their lobbies and forecourts. Because it is all on one street, you can take it in over a coffee and still be home in an hour.

The nice part is the flexibility. If the kids are done after twenty minutes, you are standing on a subway platform. If they are not, walk north toward Finch and let them burn off the rest of their energy on the rink. The 97 Yonge bus covers the same ground if the train is running slowly.

Earl Bales, G. Ross Lord and the Green Space Detour

Parks do a different kind of holiday lighting. Earl Bales Park, on Bathurst north of Sheppard, is the biggest green space in this part of the city, and in winter the lit slope and the surrounding paths read as genuinely quiet and pretty rather than festive and loud. It is a good option for a walk on a weeknight when you want the season without the crowds.

G. Ross Lord Park, at Dufferin and Finch, offers something similar along its reservoir trails. A word of caution: parks are darker than streets and some sections are not lit at all. Go with another person, stick to the paths you can see, and check the City of Toronto's parks listings for seasonal hours before you commit to an evening walk. Ski hills and rinks inside these parks have their own schedules and fees, so confirm those separately.

Four Short Detours Worth the Extra Ten Minutes

If you have already covered the obvious spots and want one more outing, these all work without heading downtown:

• Downsview Park (Keele and Sheppard) — programming changes year to year, so check ahead, but the open sightlines make it a good place to see lights against a big sky.
• York University's Keele campus — the central walkways get decorated, and it is a calm place to stroll on a weekend when the campus is quiet.
• Avenue Road and Lawrence — the strip of shops and the residential streets just north of it do understated, tasteful decorating, which makes a nice contrast to the maximalist houses in Bathurst Manor.
• Kringlewood, in Rosedale — the well-known street where nearly every house puts out a giant inflatable Santa. It is not downtown, but it is the busiest option on this list. Go early on a weeknight and expect to park several blocks away.

Practical Notes for a Lights Night

Timing matters more than anything else. The best window is a weeknight between about 5:30 and 8:00, when the displays are on but the streets are still quiet. Weekend evenings after 7:00 are crowded, and the residential streets were not designed for the traffic.

1. Plan your loop before you leave. Pick one main area plus one detour, not four. Zigzagging across the 401 kills the evening.
2. Use transit where you can. Line 1 covers Yorkdale and North York Centre. The 7 Bathurst, 29 Dufferin, 96 Wilson and 84 Sheppard West all run through the residential pockets described above.
3. Drive slowly and kill the headlights. If you are touring by car, idling with full beams on ruins the view for everyone walking, and it is genuinely dangerous on narrow streets.
4. Dress for standing, not walking. You will stop far more than you expect. Layers, warm boots and a hat beat a heavy coat you cannot open when you get warm.
5. Respect the houses. Do not block driveways, do not cross lawns, and keep noise down. These are people's homes, and a few bad evenings are what makes a neighbourhood stop decorating.

One last thing: check the City of Toronto and individual Business Improvement Area pages for dates, because a few displays only run for part of December and some rinks have holiday-hour closures. A ten-minute check saves a wasted drive. Beyond that, the best plan is a simple one — pick a neighbourhood, park once, and walk until your fingers get cold.

Photo: kamodayz / Pixabay