With one month to go until Christmas Eve, Steinbach is looking festive. Christmas lights put up by the city are drawing rave reviews, especially those across the street from city hall. Russ Dyck, head of Parks and Recreation, explains what's different there this year.

"Over the years, the lights had grown into the centres of the trees. As the trees grew larger, the lights had disappeared into the centre. So what we did is we removed all of those lights and redid them on the outsides of the trees so the impact you'll see is that the lights are brighter because they're not hidden inside the trees anymore."

The trees along Reimer Avenue across from city hall have 4,200 lights on them. But Dyck says that's only part of the city's Christmas decorations.

"In total, we decorate about 110 trees in the city, mostly on Main Street where we light up about 82 trees. Then we have the trees at city hall. We also decorate the welcome sign and the gazebo at K.R. Barkman Park. In total, we're looking at about 36,000 lights."

Dyck says the lights are removed each spring and re-installed in the fall except for the large spruce trees where the upper lights are left in place all year.

"It's quite a process. We have a few staff working on that for a couple of weeks. A lot of the them (trees) are done from the ground. We have some long poles with hooks on them so we've developed a process to do that. But some of the taller trees, we use a bucket truck for them."

The view from city hall.