Christmas Holidays bring a lot of festivities to the occasion. Choirs singing Christmas carols and songs, people decorating their homes with Christmas trees and last not but not least are lights, lots and lots of lights.
Some say that the obsession with Christmas lights by Americans is simply out of this world and frankly they are indeed right because even NASA can observe them from space.
Suomi NPP satellite which collects data on climate is able to detect the glow of lights worldwide and has reported that lights shine 20 % to 50 % brighter during Christmas and New Year’s season as compared to rest of the year in the U.S. alone. This observation was found in 70 cities across the U.S. as researchers were examining light output, which is an active contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions.
Lights start getting brighter during Black Friday which usually last up till New Year’s Eve. And they are more prominent in suburbs and outskirts of cities as their intensity increases by 30 %. Dense urban areas are not home to that much increase particularly because of less space and less single-family homes.
Americans aren’t the only ones who are crazy about holiday lights, Muslims living in the Middle East also follow a similar pattern during their Holy Month of Ramadan.