Why we do the lights
It never started as a fundraiser. It started as a family that loved Christmas lights — and a community that loved them right back.
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13 Years Ago · 2013
A small start, just for the joy of it
Thirteen years ago, the Crowells put up a modest light display in their front yard on Warnock Springs Road — nothing grand, just a family sharing a little Christmas glow with the neighbors.
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The First Seasons
The donations we never asked for
People came, and kept coming — and then they started leaving money. Donations showed up unasked, from visitors who simply wanted to say thank you. Raising money had never been the goal.
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A New Purpose
So the giving found somewhere to go
The family decided those unexpected gifts should do some good. The display became a fundraiser, with a local nonprofit partner receiving every donated dollar each year. The Crowells personally fund 100% of the light purchases, the setup, and every cost in between — so nothing a visitor gives is ever spent on the display itself.
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2016
The first donation: about $700
The first partner gift was a modest one — about $700, given to Compassion in 2016. It wasn’t much by itself, but it was the start of something: proof that a yard full of lights could put real help into the hands of people who needed it.
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Year by Year
It just kept growing
Season by season, the yard filled in. A walking path now winds through the display, and music is woven through the whole experience — one full run-through lasts about an hour and a half, and the music is broadcast on the radio, too, for the many neighbors who take it in from the car.
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Today
One of Arkansas’s largest
An estimated 15,000 people walk through each season, with untold more driving by — making Crowell Christmas Lights one of the largest private, nonprofit, free Christmas displays in the state of Arkansas. And the giving has grown right along with the glow: from that first gift of about $700 in 2016, the display has now raised over $150,000 for local nonprofits.
Thirteen seasons in, the reason hasn’t changed — it has only grown clearer. We do this to support our community, and to share the light of Christmas — its joy, and the story at the heart of it, the birth of Jesus — with everyone who finds their way down Warnock Springs Road.
