Raw States
Light Up Ocala
Ocala, FL · Holiday
- When
- November 21, 2026
- Where
- Ocala Historic Downtown Square, 1 SE Broadway St · Ocala · FL
- Cost
- Not confirmed
- Status
- Approximate: based on past editions, not announced yet
Downtown Ocala's holiday kickoff, with the lighting of the city Christmas tree, a Junior Sunshine Parade, over 100 craft and food vendors and a Santa appearance. It reportedly draws more than 100,000 people to the historic square each year.
The history within reach
- Light Up Ocalasame spot
Downtown Ocala's holiday kickoff, with the lighting of the city Christmas tree, a Junior Sunshine Parade, over 100 craft and food vendors and a Santa appearance.
- Ocala Christmas Parade1.6 mi
A community holiday parade running since 1955, with the 2026 edition themed around America's 250th anniversary.
- Ocali Country Days4.9 mi
A living-history festival inside the Silver Springs State Park grounds where blacksmiths, syrup makers and open-hearth cooks demonstrate 1800s pioneer skills among restored log cabins.
A local put a glass window in the hull of a rowboat and Florida's first tourist attraction was open, decades before anything else.
The orange-grove farmhouse where a failed New York journalist reinvented herself writing about her scrub-country neighbors, won the 1939 Pulitzer for The Yearling, and answered the neighbor who sued her over Cross Creek.