Glitter is the stuff of fairytales. And December has turned into a star-lit month with lights and decorations in abundance. People in Grimsby were so ready that lights were up by mid-November on many homes. Even Niagara Falls started early - from November 16th until January 5th is their Festival of Lights.
We have the butter tart trail in Ontario. That's for summer. For winter, there's "The Hot Chocolate Trail" - there are 20 stops and over 30 flavours to sip and savour in Niagara Falls and the surrounding area. Seems Canadian to me.
The Niagara Falls version of fairytale celebrations focus on the light displays. There are 3.5 million lights on display in Niagara Falls with dozens of display installations in the Falls, the Parkway and Lundy's Lane. Here's a screen shot of one of them - The Niagara Falls version of a fairytale walkway. . This one by Oreos is 100 feet long. The displays are described here.
One year I create the decorative urn display at the Casa Toscana restaurant in town. It was a naturalistic display, and received such poor reactions that one patron offered to fix it. So I went out and bought a lot of red white and green ornaments to bling it up. This minimalistic displaya few years ago at the Niagara Falls Greenhouse would likely get a similar response. This year, it seems to need a whole bunch of lights on the right. What do you think?
Having a light festival at Winter Solstice is perfect. It seems a bit of luck that we get to focus on such bright and sparkly displays at the darkest time of year.
