“Light Drenching” Is the Joanna Gaines-Approved Holiday Trend You Need to Try This Year

With Thanksgiving in the rearview mirror, it’s time to turn your attention to twinkly lights and wrapping paper. Chip and Joanna Gaines just set up their Christmas tree over the Thanksgiving weekend, and you have to see just how many lights this tree has. I’m calling it “light drenching,” and it’s going to change the way you decorate your Christmas tree from this year forward.

“O Christmas Tree!” Joanna Gaines captioned a recent Instagram video, tagging Grigsby Farms in Salado, Texas, as the source of their absolutely massive fir. And when Gaines pans over to her son Crew adding the finishing touches, the magic of the thousands of twinkling lights could make a person cry.

This light-drenched Christmas tree is simple enough to re-create with your own tree — you just need a lot of twinkle lights and patience. Though you can drench your tree with the lights of your choosing, Gaines used the classic soft white incandescent Christmas lights, which give her tree that warm, nostalgic glow.

These lights from Amazon come in strands of up to 400 lights (that’s just over 91 feet), so you can get that saturated look without having to connect tons of individual strands together.

The key to getting that drenched look is to first find a tree that has dense branches so you have plenty of nooks and crannies to work with. Place your first round of lights on the interior of your tree, closer to the trunk, keeping the spiral of lights fairly tight. Then, when the interior is complete, add one or two layers of lights on the boughs of your branches — and give each bough the light treatment. 

You’ll be left with a Christmas tree that looks like it’s glittering. And don’t think about the process of de-lighting it (that’s a problem for 2025 You).