in DC: National Tree Equality…

Last week I made my annual (freezing) pilgrimage downtown to get a glance at the National Christmas Tree. This year, at least, I was smart enough to stop in for a few drinks first… for medicinal purposes, naturally!

This year’s tree looked great, the shape of the lighted covering was a lot better than a previous year’s kinda sloppy netting, and the LED lights were perfect. Also Google’s Made with Code was well-advertised, even with some touchscreen panels so that visitors could program their own LED patterns on the smaller trees surrounding the main tree.

Everything else was almost the same as every year, except that instead of the Pathway of Peace with the states’ trees and ornaments being around the main tree, they were sort of moved to the back. Clearly the Made with Code trees were the headliner, though all they really seemed to do was repeat some color-shifting patterns, so maybe the user-programmed patterns hadn’t been programmed in yet.

I usually walk fairly quickly through the state trees because it’s often the more crowded pathway with people trying to see their home state–or every state, but I did stop for a selfie between Delaware and District of Columbia, naturally.

Once I’d taken my poorly-lit picture, I checked out the tree to see some of the ornaments submitted by Delaware. A while back, they started giving the states globes in which to encase their ornaments so they don’t get damaged by weather, and many artists took to using the globes as canvas instead of just protection. So seeing a rainbow-painted ornament with same-sex symbols on it was a nice surprise as these ornaments are usually submitted by school students.

Compared to the backdrop of the National Tree, it’s a small thing, but a statement nonetheless. And a pretty cool one.