Christmas Light Kerfuffle: Why Is Jellystone's 'Dancing Lights Of Christmas' Cancelled?

DONELSON, TN — 'Twas three months before Christmas and all through the city, the end of a tradition has folks feeling pity.

After seven years, drawing tens of thousands of cars to crawl through the park and gawk at the display, the Dancing Lights of Christmas at Jellystone Park near Opryland will stay dark during the 2017 festive period, but who, exactly, is the Grinch that this stole this Christmas tradition?

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At a meeting Wednesday at the Texas Troubadour Theatre, a mile and a half up the road from Jellystone, Metro Councilman Jeff Syracuse said the owners of the campground have had months to come up with a traffic plan for the attraction, which typically opens Thanksgiving and runs through the new year. In those 39 days last year, 45,000 people saw the lights — an average of about 1150 each night.

With shoppers filling Opry Mills and light-lookers enjoying the decorations at the Opryland Hotel, that only adds to the congestion in the Music Valley/Pennington Bend area, according to a traffic study commissioned by the city, so Syracuse asked Jellystone to come up with a plan which, he says, they never did. But the owners of the campground don't know what the problem is.

"WE NEED YOUR HELP! For the past seven years, we have complied 100% with the city in every capacity. We are not required to obtain a permit, there are NO lease issues, and have always followed Metro police department's traffic plan and suggestions at our own expense...We never agreed to pull the plug on the light show," they wrote on a Change.org petition pushing for the display to return.

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Owner Mike Scalf told WKRN he doesn't understand why his attraction is targeted and not the ones up the street at Opryland.

“The reason we’re being singled out, we feel, is because we’re not Gaylord or Opry Mills. We’re a small veteran-owned little family Christmas light show,” he told the station.

Scalf also said Syracuse's claim that there is a lease issue is false.

"We were looking forward to being back at Jellystone Park this year,”Scalf said in a news release. “We were excited and set for the season – having hired employees, rented equipment and placed advertising. We were extremely disappointed to hear about Councilman Syracuse’s decision to shut us down. Contrary to what has been reported, we were not aware of his decision until we were contacted by a reporter Tuesday night.”

At Wednesday's meeting, though, Syracuse insisted he's not "a bad guy," he just refuses to spend tax dollars on a traffic plan for a private company.

"I'm not shutting anybody down, I'm simply not spending our tax dollars on time and effort to put together a plan for them. I don't necessarily want to lose them or to hurt anybody's business but this isn't something that happened overnight," he said.

If you need a fix, watch a drive-through of last year's display:

Image via YouTube