April may be the cruelest month, but December, the darkest, can feel unkind, too. New York, however, offers its own illumination during these long, blustery nights, and not just Rockefeller Center’s seasonal sparkle. Here’s a guide to some of the lavish light displays across the city, including twinkling and towering sculptures, Chinese-style lantern shows and giant menorahs. You will usually find food, entertainment and family activities here, as well as glowing LED artifice: fairy palaces, alluring sweets, roaring dinosaurs — and lots of pandas.

RanDalls Island Park

LuminoCity Festival

Imagine waking up inside an anime cartoon. LuminoCity, a 16-acre extravaganza, even has its own hero from another universe: Lumi, a magical light bulb. Resembling a benevolent Pokémon, Lumi appears — in lantern form — throughout the displays, offering amazed commentary in recorded, childlike narration. You (and he) explore the exhibits, which Xiaoyi Chen, LuminoCity’s founder, has patterned after the lantern festival in Zigong, China.

Sculpted in steel and covered in satin, LuminoCity’s enormous lanterns occupy environments like the Winter Fantasy, which includes Santa’s sleigh and a towering castle. The Wild Adventure features dinosaurs, as well as a miniature Bifengxia Panda Reserve. My favorite display was in the Sweet Dream environment: a giant waving cat — a symbol of good luck — surrounded by 12 smaller ones representing real feline Instagram stars. LuminoCity also offers performances, themed nights, a heated marketplace and shuttle bus service to and from 125th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan. (But if you book the bus, wait on the street and not — as I did — on the avenue.) Through Jan. 5; luminocityfestival.com.