Christmas Designs

Throwback: Upside Down Christmas

Rob Merow from Calvary Fellowship in Downington, PA brings us this upside down Christmas set. (Originally posted September 2013)

This was a partially new and partially re-used set. The plank towers were a reuse from their “Fall Planks” set, but were painted white for winter and up-lit with MEGAbar LED’s. The 6 trees on the ground were artificial trees, wrapped in different strands of solid colored LED Christmas lights from Decra-lite. Each color was plugged into its own dimmer channel to allow the Christmas lights to “change color”.

The new addition was their inverted Christmas Tree forest. They purchased 12 real Christmas trees from their local tree farm and spray painted them white (to pick up the light better). They were then suspended, using screw-eyelets and chain, to their batten pipe-grid over the worship team. The trees were up-lit using CB12 LED’s. The scene was tied together by photoshopping a background of the inverted trees for the center projection screen; with multiple versions of the background photoshopped into different colors so that the backgrounds could be timed to change with the CB12’s resulting in a seamless 2d + 3D forest.

Since most of the set was re-used, they only had to pay for the real trees and hardware – roughly $500.

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10 responses to “Throwback: Upside Down Christmas”

  1. Barry Armstrong says:

    It looks nice. I am just curious about the significance if trees hanging upside down from the ceiling. Artistically I like it, but I’m left wondering…

    • Rob Merow says:

      We gave no explanation, and most people were happy to come up with their own. There really was no “real” explanation short of an interesting (and space-saving) take on a classic Christmas decor element.

    • Kevin says:

      I’m just one of the many that don’t care for the upside down Christmas tree thing at all. Then again, being on the other side of 60 now, I’m allowed.
      To each his own. And, I realize it’s not of the same significance…but it does make me curious:…what would the reaction be if we turned the cross upside down?

  2. Samuel Mohr says:

    Love the design. How many pars did you have suspended to get the wash effect on the stage?

  3. Rob Merow says:

    9 pars down, 10 CB12 LED’s from the floor to wash the trees, and 8 MEGAbar LED’s up to light the planks.

  4. Tim Harden says:

    Love this design. How many weeks did you have this setup and did you run into any issues with the trees shedding needles or sap? We want to do something similar for a 4wk series, but obviously watering the trees isn’t an option.

  5. Rob Merow says:

    We actually thoroughly sprayed all the trees with “tree safe fire retardent” which doubles as an adhesive to glue the needles on. We had literally zero needles drop over the course of the 4 week hang.

    Though as soon as we touched the the trees to take them down the needles practically exploded off the trees… ha.

  6. Paul Austin says:

    @Barry: Upside-down trees make sense to this down-under Kiwi, for whom Christmas is more BBQ’s on the beach and sunburn, than snow, mistletoe and starlight..Strip away the decorative accretions, and it’s the story that remains – God our creator came as one created. That is a world upside-down. Kudos Rob. Like it!

  7. Joyce L Schonsheck says:

    Did spraying them with the fire retardant spray make them acceptable to your Fire Marshall?

  8. Anna says:

    Hello, my question doesn’t have to do with the decorations it looks really cool. We are looking to re-decorate our stage. I love the flooring of your stage. Are you able to give me information on what material is used?

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