Homeless Warm Up With a Light Christmas

ANCHORAGE —  Some homeless people are using a different kind of holiday wrap to keep themselves warm: strings of multicolored lights from one of the city’s Christmas trees.

“It’s just the one tree by City Hall,” said John Dubois, a municipal electrician. “These are 25-light strings and they put out quite a lot of heat.

“They’re pretty careful when they wrap themselves up so they don’t lie down and break any of the bulbs,” he said.

The street people generally go to the back of the tree, where they cannot be seen from the street, pull down some of the strings and wrap the lights around their bodies. Then they put their coats on over the lights to hold in the heat, Dubois said.