Some of us are content with a little tinsel number on the coffee table. Some of us like a real conifer, and hunt through the shop for the best-shaped specimen. Some of us forget all about it until the night before Christmas, then rush out and buy one on special at the supermarket.
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Whatever your Christmas tree tastes, you’re guaranteed not to be doing it on the scale of the residents of the Gubbio, a small medieval city in northern Italy.
Every year since 1981, they have turned the looming mountainside above the town – Mount Ingino – into what the Guinness Book of Records has recognised as the biggest Christmas tree in the world.
Of course, it’s not actually a tree, more of a tree-shaped light installation, but let’s not quibble.
The ‘tree’ rises 650 metres up the slope, made up of nearly 3,000 multi-coloured lights and 8.5 kilometres of cabling.
A shining shooting star at the top covers an area of more than 1,000 square metres and is made up of 250 lights.
The first tree was illuminated in 1981. Since then, on the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 7), the Christmas tree is lit up and remains lit for a month.
The tree can be seen 50 kilometres away, which gives new meaning to the concept of Christmas lights.
