Some people prefer to defile the essence of Christmas through a traditional vomit-spray of lighting, as in the below. Those who tend toward the latest greatest in tiny-bulbed Christmas wattage seem to have cottoned onto a fire sale for blue, green and red peppered lighting strings this year at Home Depot. The blue dominates on the eves, fences and trees of people so compelled to up the ante on their nighttime festive displays:
Or, you can choose to embrace the limits of your budget and ladder, and celebrate in a low-key, grass-rootsy kind of way. Here, the owners of this S. Milwaukee Street property have comprehensively captured the contours of the trunks of two fruit trees, and have decried the option to attempt illumination of the branches as not worth their trouble. In the process, I wonder if they haven't subverted our very expectations of Christmas lighting. In lighting the branches, the heights of a tree's reach, are we not subscribing to an elitist selectory that values only the "high" the "lofty"? Below, the reverse is celebrated: a lack of funds, a lack of cord, a lack of time, generally, or will to navigate the disagreeable branches of a mid-sized tree. Instead, we are left with a definitive statement about man's vantage on salvation. "Hurry up and decorate thy trees before Boardwalk Empire comes back on." Seems to be the canticle of the honest residents of Cory-Merrill neighborhood.
