Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas Snowflake

The Christmas Snowflake in New York
on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue


This is the Christmas Snowflake that I kept viewing from afar on the streets of New York.

According to this site, it is:
[T]he UNICEF Snowflake is a special symbol for the world's most vulnerable children. It hangs as a reminder of UNICEF’s commitment to reach a day when zero children die from preventable causes.
This lofty promise, as well as being unbelievable, is pompous and arrogant. But the snow flake is imposing and beautiful, as a simple giant, reminder of Christmas.

Here is more background on the snow flake:
The original snowflake, a New York attraction since 1984, was dedicated to UNICEF by the Stonbely family in 2002. On its 20th anniversary, UNICEF sought the help of renowned lighting designer Ingo Maurer and his team in Germany to design and engineer a new snowflake. Collaborating with the world’s leading crystal-maker, Baccarat, they constructed the largest outdoor chandelier.

In 2005, a larger snowflake was created for New York with the original snowflake moving to its new home...on Rodeo Drive.

The New York Snowflake contains 16,000 crystal prisms, is 23 feet wide and over 28 feet tall, and weighs more than 3,300 pounds.