Celebratory lighting (also termed festive lighting) is the use of lighting for decorative, celebratory or recreational purposes in connection with a specific festival, observance or event in a given culture.
Whilst one of the most commonly known form of Celebratory lighting is the European (and later North American) tradition of Christmas lights, many cultures have used Celebratory lighting in specific cultural circumstances.
Closely related to celebratory lighting, are:
- the use of organised illuminations as semi-public entertainment, a concept which in some forms can be traced to the Ancient Chinese, although the modern form largely developed during the nineteenth century
- Ritual lighting, in connection with specific religious practices.
Famous quotes containing the word lighting:
“Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time; then it loses favor with its original audience as a new generation grows up; then it begins to merge into the softer lighting of “quaint,” and cultivated people become interested in it, and finally it begins to take on the archaic dignity of the primitive.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)