This is what they try to imitate, when they trim the Christmas trees with little glass icicles and spangle them with lights.  But it’s hardly the same.  Here, the trees themselves have turned to ice, and they burn when the sunlight streams through them.  Little splashes of white fire run along the edges of each branch, each twig, each rare still-clinging leaf.  What had seemed so dead, under winter’s grasp, has been made vibrant and immediate and live like electricity.

In the sun and wind, the ice shatters away and leaps into the air, showering the ground with broken crystal.  The trees stand a little taller again.