Time and time again, the age-old expression holds us: everything really is bigger in Texas – Christmas included. A holiday tradition in Texas since 1984, Dallas Galleria has once again assembled its iconic 95-foot-tall Christmas tree.
The monolith tree, which is decked out with roughly 10,000 colored ornaments and nearly half a million lights requires the work of 50 employees at Galleria who come together and spend days building the five-ton steel frame before installing more than 1,700 branches and decorating the enormous evergreen.
According to Galleria, each branch is hand-fluffed three times and the colorful LED lights are tested twice before they are installed by crews who scale the giant structure. The tree is then topped by a 100-pound, 10-foot LED star that was the first of its kind in the United States.
After the tree was completed on Thursday, November 10, the official start of the Christmas season was marked with the center’s famed Grand Tree Lightings featuring a spectacular ice-skating show and a fireworks finale on Friday, November 25.
The center is now home to an exorbitant amount of decorations across all three floors in the build-up to the big day. 44 palm trees custom wrapped with 50,000 lights now line Galleria’s third floor and a further 10 titanic trees festooned with 40,000 lights are situated throughout the shopping Shangri-La.
Friday, November 25 saw the exuberant free extravaganza kick off the official holiday season with performances from Olympic and Nationally recognized figure skaters and ice dancers as well as students from the Galleria Dallas Skate School. Missile Toes, Galleria’s famed ice-skating, back-flipping, pyrotechnic Santa Clause also, of course, made his much-anticipated return to the tree’s surrounding ice rink.
The surrounding ice rink is now open for skaters throughout the month. More information on public skating hours at Galleria can be found here.
Each year more skaters ice-skate around the tree than around the one at Rockefeller Center in New York City with many couples deciding to pop the question during the iconic seasonal experience.
Several times each day the Illumination Celebration also sees 450,000 LED lights on the tree “dance” in time to specially orchestrated music. It’s one of many free shows and spectacles on offer at Galleria Dallas during the holiday season. Both Santa meet and greets at Santaland and the immersive holiday photo experience SNOWDAY also returned on November 18.
Santa and Tinsel are on their way to Galleria Dallas! 🎅
Tickets are on sale now, so make sure you book your visit before they sell out. For tickets, visit our link in bio.
Santaland
November 18 – December 24SNOWDAY
November 18 – January 8Level 1, near Banana Republic pic.twitter.com/YSoOqGjrAa
— Galleria Dallas (@GalleriaDallas) November 1, 2022
More information on all the holiday experiences going on at Galleria Dallas can be found at galleriadallas.com/holiday.
[Featured image from Instagram / @galleriadallas]