25 Days of Ottawa Christmas Lights #25: A best-of photo slideshow

Every day in December leading up to Christmas, local photographer Christophe Ledent has been travelling around the city and sharing a daily photo and story about Ottawa Christmas lights. ( You can see all the photos so far here. ) Today, he’s collected his favourite shots in the photo slideshow below.

From Parliament Hill to Taffy Lane to Upper Canada Village, Christmas lights are a very popular here. Our map of Ottawa Christmas lights was one of the top pages on OttawaStart in December.

Seth Godin has a theory on why we put so much effort into decorating our houses and buildings with lights for one month of the year:

"People like the way it feels to live in a community filled with decorated houses. They enjoy the drive or the walk through town, seeing the lights, and they want to be part of it, want to contribute and want to be noticed too... Broken Windows asserts that in cities with small acts of vandalism and unrepaired facades, crime goes up. The Christmas Light corollary might be that in towns (or online communities) where there's a higher rate of profit-free community contribution, happiness and productivity go up as well."

There’s another factor at play in our cold, icy city: the colour and warmth that the lights create on some of the darkest, chilliest days of the year. Despite all the snow we’ve had in the last couple of weeks, the glow of Christmas lights still finds a way to shine through.

Merry Christmas and thanks to Christophe for all of his photos over the past few weeks!

** See also: ** Ottawa Christmas Lights Map

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