Beautiful Outdoor Christmas Decorations Created Using These Two Devices
When December arrives, our cities, shopping centers, and town squares transform into magical winter wonderlands. We stand in awe before towering Christmas trees bathed in thousands of twinkling LEDs, massive wreaths adorned with oversized baubles, and intricate light displays draped across high archways. The visual result is pure magic, designed to evoke nostalgia and joy.
However, the process of creating this magic is anything but ethereal. It is a feat of logistics, planning, and, most importantly, industrial engineering.
Behind every 40-foot municipal Christmas tree and every perfectly lit building facade lies a practical challenge: gravity. How do decorators safely reach dizzying heights while carrying heavy commercial-grade ornaments and miles of cabling, all while ensuring the delicate branches of a massive tree aren't damaged?
The answer isn't Santa’s sleigh. As clearly depicted in the image above, the unsung heroes of large-scale holiday decorating are two distinct pieces of heavy machinery: the Scissor Lift and the Articulating Boom Lift.
This article delves into the mechanics of holiday magic, exploring how these two powerful devices work in tandem to turn industrial effort into beautiful outdoor Christmas decorations.
The Challenge of Scale in Commercial Decorating
To appreciate why these specific machines are necessary, we must first understand the difference between decorating a living room and decorating a city square.
When hanging lights on a six-foot tree at home, a sturdy stepladder and a bit of patience are usually sufficient. But when the scale increases to commercial or municipal levels, the challenges multiply exponentially. We are no longer talking about delicate glass ornaments; we are dealing with items that require serious structural support and installation crews that need safe, stable working platforms at significant heights.
Why Ladders Are Obsolete for Pro Jobs
For professional installation companies, property managers, and municipal crews, traditional ladders are rarely an option for grand displays.
Safety Hazards: Trying to balance 30 feet in the air on a ladder rung while holding a heavy garland and operating a staple gun is a recipe for disaster. The risk of falls increases dramatically with height and unstable loads.
Lack of Efficiency: Ladders require constant repositioning. To wrap a large tree, a worker would have to climb up, attach a few feet of lights, climb down, move the ladder two feet to the right, and repeat the process hundreds of times. It is agonizingly slow.
Limited Payload: A worker on a ladder can only carry what fits in a tool belt or one free hand. Commercial decorating requires having multiple strands of lights, zip ties, power tools, and bulky ornaments immediately at hand.
To achieve the stunning results seen in modern outdoor Christmas displays safely and efficiently, professionals turn to Aerial Work Platforms (AWPs). While there are many types of AWPs, the two reigning champions of the holiday season are the scissor lift and the articulating boom lift shown in the image.
Device 1: The Scissor Lift – The Stable Foundation
(Pictured in red in the header image)
Look at the base of the towering Christmas tree in the image. You will see a red machine with a wide platform supported by crisscrossing metal supports. This is a scissor lift, the workhorse of lower-to-mid-level vertical access.
How It Works
The mechanism of a scissor lift is straightforward. The linked, folding supports (the "scissors") draw together to push the platform straight up. Because the lifting mechanism is directly beneath the platform, these lifts offer exceptional stability and a high weight capacity. They are designed primarily for vertical movement; they go straight up and straight down.
The Scissor Lift's Role in Holiday Decorating
In the context of creating beautiful outdoor Christmas decorations, the scissor lift is indispensable for specific tasks where stability and workspace trump extreme reach.
1. The "Bulk" Work at the Base Large outdoor Christmas trees are widest at the bottom. This area requires the highest density of ornaments and the longest strands of lights. The scissor lift is perfect here. As seen in the photo, the large platform allows multiple workers to be up in the air simultaneously, along with boxes of decorations. They can work as a team to efficiently wrap the massive circumference of the tree's lower half.
2. Decorating Facades and Hanging Banners Beyond the tree, scissor lifts are ideal for linear work along flat surfaces. If a shopping center needs garlands hung along a long awning or large banners suspended above an entrance, the scissor lift can be driven along the facade (while lowered), raised into position, and used as a stable mobile scaffold.
3. Heavy Lifting Capacity Commercial decorations are surprisingly heavy. A scissor lift typically has a higher platform weight capacity than a boom lift of comparable size. This means crews can load the platform with dozens of light spools and oversized baubles at ground level, reducing the number of trips up and down.
The Limitation: The scissor lift's main limitation is its vertical-only movement. If there is an obstacle on the ground—like a planter, a set of stairs, or the wide lower branches of the tree itself—the scissor lift cannot reach over it. It must be positioned directly underneath the work area.
Device 2: The Articulating Boom Lift – The Precision Reach
(Pictured in green in the header image)
Now, look toward the top of the tree in the image. The green machine with the long, jointed arm extending upward is an articulating boom lift. Often called a "cherry picker" (a nod to its agricultural origins), this device is essential for precision work at significant heights.
How It Works
Unlike the scissor lift's vertical mechanism, a boom lift uses a hydraulic arm attached to a rotating turntable base. The crucial feature of an articulating boom is the presence of "knuckles" or joints in the arm. This allows the arm to bend, fold, and extend in multiple directions, giving it "up-and-over" capabilities. The smaller basket at the end can be maneuvered into tight spaces with high precision.
The Boom Lift's Role in Holiday Decorating
When the decorating gets tough, tight, or towering, the articulating boom lift takes over.
1. The "Up-and-Over" Advantage This is the primary reason the green machine is essential for the tree in the photo. To reach the upper middle section of a conical Christmas tree, you cannot simply drive a lift straight up close to the trunk—you would crash into the wider lower branches.
The articulating boom can sit back from the base of the tree, raise its main boom arm up over the lower branches, and then articulate the secondary jib arm down or in toward the trunk. This allows decorators to access the inner depths of the tree without damaging the expensive faux foliage or natural branches below them.
2. Crowning the Tree Placing the star, angel, or snowflake topper is the crowning moment of any tree build. It is also the highest and most precarious point. The boom lift provides the extreme vertical reach necessary to get a worker to the very apex of a 40- or 50-foot tree. The maneuverable basket allows for precise centering of the topper, ensuring it doesn't look crooked from the ground.
3. Navigating Obstacles Outdoor decorating rarely happens on a perfectly flat, empty concrete slab. There are usually benches, lamp posts, curbs, and landscaping in the way. A boom lift can be parked on a street or sidewalk, and its arm can reach over these obstacles to access the decorating zone, something a scissor lift cannot do.
4. Intricate Detailing The smaller basket of the boom lift is ideal for one or two workers focused on detailed tasks. When spiraling lights toward the narrow top of the tree, the operator can smoothly rotate the boom around the tree's circumference, creating perfectly even spacing for the lights.
The Power Duo: Why They Are Used Together
The image perfectly captures standard industry practice: using both machines simultaneously for maximum efficiency.
Building a giant commercial Christmas tree is a time-sensitive project. These displays often need to go up overnight or over a single weekend to minimize disruption to retail traffic. Using only one type of machine would double the installation time.
By utilizing both devices, as seen in the photo, the crew divides and conquers:
Team Red (Scissor Lift) tackles the heavy lifting and broad strokes on the lower 40% of the tree. They are moving volume—getting the bulk of the lights and large ornaments onto the widest part of the structure.
Team Green (Boom Lift) handles the technical, high-altitude work. They are focused on the delicate upper sections, wrapping the narrowing cone, and ensuring the very top is perfect.
This tandem approach ensures that the beautiful outdoor Christmas decorations are ready for the lighting ceremony on schedule.
Crucial Considerations: Safety and Logistics
While these machines make beautiful decorations possible, operating them is serious business. Creating holiday magic requires strict adherence to safety protocols.
1. Training and Certification
You cannot just rent these devices and figure them out on the fly. Operators must be properly trained and certified (e.g., IPAF training or OSHA-compliant certification in the US) for the specific type of AWP they are using. The controls for a scissor lift are vastly different from the complex hydraulic articulation of a boom lift.
2. Fall Protection
Look closely at the workers in the image. They are wearing hard hats and high-visibility vests. Crucially, though not explicitly visible in every detail, workers in boom lifts are required to wear a full-body safety harness and a lanyard attached to an anchor point within the basket. This "fall restraint" system prevents them from being catapulted out of the basket should the boom arm jerk suddenly. While scissor lifts have guardrails, harnesses are often required there depending on local regulations and site-specific risks.
3. Weather Conditions
Outdoor holiday decorating happens in late autumn and early winter. Weather is a major factor.
Wind: Both boom lifts and scissor lifts have strict wind speed limits. Extending a boom 60 feet in the air turns it into a giant lever; high winds can destabilize the machine.
Ice and Snow: Platforms can become slippery, and frozen ground can change stability.
4. Ground Conditions
These machines are heavy. A large articulating boom lift can weigh over 20,000 pounds. Before driving one onto a city plaza paved with decorative pavers or into a park with soft grass, ground conditions must be assessed. Driving a heavy lift over underground utilities or weak pavement can cause expensive damage.
Conclusion: Where Industry Meets Artistry
When we gaze up at a beautifully decorated outdoor Christmas tree this season, let’s take a moment to appreciate the engineering reality behind the shimmering lights.
The process is a fascinating intersection of heavy industrial capability and delicate artistic vision. It requires the brute strength of hydraulics to lift personnel four stories into the air, combined with the gentle touch of a decorator ensuring a glass bauble is perfectly placed on a pine branch.
The green articulating boom lift and the red scissor lift are more than just construction equipment; during the holiday season, they are the essential tools that allow communities to build festive monuments that inspire wonder. Without these two incredible devices, our commercial Christmas displays would remain grounded, and the magic of the season a little dimmer