Number 36 of the New York Times top 52 destinations of the year is Tyrol, Austria, home of Kristallwelten, a winter funland developed by Swarovski Crystal. Watching the NYT video of Kristallwelten’s Crystal Cloud (an art installation of 800,000 hand-mounted crystals) I was reminded of Lighted Christmas Balls, much humbler sparkle clouds made of chicken wire and mini-lights. We humans seem to have an innate attraction for things that sparkle. Stars, moon glow on water, diamonds. To capture that feeling of wonder, some of us just can’t help ourselves and build our own sparkly light balls out of wire mesh or plastic cups :)
The Catholic church around the corner from me decorated one of the pine trees on their property this holiday season.They put up seven or eight of the lighted chicken wire balls. This is the first time I have seen them in person. One of their parishioners must be from the east coast.