While the team at GE Global Research was hard at work building Santa’s high-tech sleigh of the future, the folks in GE’s lighting business have been busy stringing up holiday cheer from Paris to Washington. On the famous Champs Elysees this year, “a glittering forest of fuchsia” lights adorn more than 400 trees for two kilometers — and an additional 120 trees are decorated with 30,000 flashing lights to represent the “light from falling stars”. Meanwhile, across the ocean in Washington, D.C., GE’s design of the 2009 National Christmas Tree this year has made it the most energy efficient in history — with LEDs using about 6,000 watts compared to last year’s 18,000 watts.

GE Lighting has been a partner of the annual Champs Elysees event since 2002.
City of lights: GE Lighting has been a partner of the annual Champs Elysees event since 2002. The number of pedestrians visiting the famous avenue is expected to rise from an average of 300,000 to 500,000 every day reaching more than a million on Dec. 31. Celebrities including Liza Minelli, Johnny Halliday, Monica Belluci, Vanessa Paradis and Marion Cotillard, attended the illumination ceremony.

Back in Washington, the U.S. National Park Foundation says that this year’s energy efficiency goal sprang from the idea: “If households across the nation are working to ‘reuse and recycle’ and reduce energy consumption, why shouldn’t the National Christmas Tree do it, too?… For the last three years, GE has been gradually trimming the tree with more LED (light emitting diode) lighting, which is powered by tiny computer chips, and has about ten times the life of traditional incandescent lighting. This year, the ornaments will also be retrofitted with LED bulbs to achieve the significant additional wattage reduction.”


National treasure: GE has been designing the National Christmas Tree since 1962, producing and donating the lighting and decorations.

Also in the lighting hit parade this year is the annual extravaganza at GE Lighting’s historic Nela Park in Cleveland, Ohio — which has been a local tradition since 1925. Inspired by today’s popular dance shows, GE has dubbed this year’s display “Dancing Through the Holiday Season,” featuring more than a quarter million lights and dance-themed displays.


Light on their feet: “If you’ve ever been to one of GE’s holiday displays, you know that lights have a unique way of dancing,” said Debbie George, a design consultant for GE who created this year’s display. “The various holiday vignettes capture movement and beauty with displays that twinkle, flash, stream and dance. It’s a great way to show the excitement of the season.”

Ho, ho, ho! In the process of doing some research on consumers and LED lights, GE’s survey turned up some fun holiday insights. Consumers in the West were more likely to decorate with LED lights (31 percent) than the Northeast (23 percent) or South (21 percent). Females prefer white lights over multi-colored. People in the Northeast are most likely to decorate with white lights and use real trees, while people in the Midwest and South were most likely to use multi-colored lights and artificial trees.

* Learn more about the Paris lights
* Learn more about this year’s National Christmas Tree
* Learn more about GE’s LED systems

We’ll see you again on December 28th. Happy holidays from everyone here at GE Reports!