#355 When construction cranes get Christmas lights on them

Neil Pasricha

They’re not selling anything.

Nope, Christmas lights on construction cranes just smile down on the city and cover us all in a warm and festive light. Flickering in the sky, flashing way up high, they hug us all together in a friendly yellow glow.

On top of that, it’s sort of fun thinking about how they got there too. Doesn’t it seem kind of dangerous? It’s like someone risked their lives just putting up lights for the people.

Thanks Spiderman!

AWESOME!

Thanks for making The Book of Awesome a #1 bestseller in The Toronto Star for 30 weeks!

Photo from: here

31 thoughts to “#355 When construction cranes get Christmas lights on them”

  1. Neil,
    One of my favorite parts about 1000awesomethings is scrolling over the pictures to see the names of the links. There is something about clever titles like “Christmas crane” that just gets me to smile even wider than I always am when I visit your site. Thanks!

    Sydney, Chicago

  2. I was driving the other night and saw a restaurant covered in lights. It made me smile, and I thought to myself ” why do Christmas lights always make me smile?” I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen any lights on a crane, but I’m sure they’re AWESOME!!

  3. Oh, good one! Like you said, they’re not trying to sell you anything or advertise … they just want to use their extreme height to spread some Christmas spirit. And the fact that someone was practically cheating death to get them up there … well, that just makes it all the more special!

    There’s a power plant in my town that has a huge smokestack tower thing … every year for Christmas, they put a gigantic Christmas light star at the top, and I’ve always felt the same way: in awe that they would risk falling hundreds of feet just to decorate for the rest of us. So thanks, crane people and power plant people!

    1. Well I guess if you have to look at an ugly crane or a smoke stack, the least they can do is spruce it up for the holidays :P

  4. Aw, now I feel a bit deprived. We don’t have Chirstmas cranes or stars on our power plants. The closest thing we have here is when they put the Christmas tree, consisting only of lights and no tree, on top of the BB&T building right smack dab in the middle of the city. There’s no spider man there, its just on the roof.
    There is one building that puts different colored lights in their windows, so at night it looks like there’s a huge tree instead of a building. I think that is pretty awesome.

  5. There’s a crane in downtown Bordeaux that towers over Place Gambetta and at night all you can see are some rotating lights hovering in space. I didn’t even realize that it was a crane before, it did indeed make my night walk a bit more awesome :)

  6. Hmm, we don’t have Christmas Cranes here, but there is one guy who lives on top of a hill outside of town. There’s a giant pole on his land, that happens to be centered so that you can see it when driving on main street. Every year they hang lights from it, and they fixed a gigantic star on top, so when you’re driving at night it looks like this massive Christmas tree. During the day it’s just looks like a pole, so it’s kind of like a secret Christmas tree.

    1. Ooh. Secret Christmas tree. I like that. It’s like secret Santa, but everyone gets one big surprise.

  7. In a similar vein, I like when people hoist things up with cranes (like an old car or funny sign) and leave it up at the end of the workday just to amuse people. :)

  10. The word your looking for here is have.
    When construction cranes have christmas lights on them.
    OR, Construction cranes with christmas lights on them.

    but yes! so festive!!! :)

    1. AB, the word you’re looking for is ‘you’re’, not your.

      Merry Christmas to all the picky people out there.

    1. Yes, me, too! An overhead lift company in PA always puts a tree up on their highest lift(several stories tall)…so cool!

  13. This made me smile because my husband is a crane electrician and one of the people that puts those lights up at a navy yard nearby. We drove by to see them last night and they always add a little cheer.

  14. I love this…kinda restores my faith in humanity and always makes me think of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

  15. I grew up in a shipbuilding town. My absolute favorite was the light up star they would put on the top of the shipbuilding crane!

  17. Well if you ask me it looks much better then the towering ugly metal.
    I am glad whoever risked their lives to do this it looks real nice
    Thank you SpiderMan

  19. I did this for years in Vancouver BC. Every Christmas we would volunteer our time to install the lights on the crane at whichever jobsite we were on. The super would supply a warm meal and something warm to drink at the end of the day for all involved.

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