A few days ago, unable to entirely escape the sometimes forced jollity of the season while walking about the City, I found myself casually thinking about the number of color schemes that could be drawn on to celebrate these December holidays (or decorate things which already had perfectly respectable aesthetics) - and also the hues that couldn't.

The decor I had in mind at the time was mostly that which attaches to the traditional, Christmas-inspired parts of these celebrations, and the colors which even in the mixed societies of today still seem to dominate the December palette, even in warmer climates, where balloons are sometimes pretty Christmas-y.

I decided in my head that, at least when it comes to monochromatic lighting arrangements, orange was certainly out, if only because orange was so important to some major October and November holidays. I think I had also eliminated bright yellow, and hadn't even thought of chartreuse, so I was pretty surprised, coming out of Chelsea Market two days ago, to come across thousands of these tiny chartreuse lights fixed to every surface of the trees planted just west of the raised terrace of the Maritime Hotel on 9th Avenue.

I decided they were probably actually yellow, or gold, that it was the bright blue light remaining in the sky that was tinting them a bit chartreuse. By the time I got closer and captured this image the sky had darkened a bit and they no longer looked anything but gold. I now determined that one way or another, gold goes with almost everything, including (let's hope for all of our sakes) this brand new year.