While non-traditional Christmas trees, metal poles, structures and other installations, get decorated during festive season every year, there is a particular density of notable examples around Orissaare.

The only remaining pylon from the former Väinatamm high-voltage line — disconnected from the national grid over a year-and-a-half ago — is now suddenly bedecked with Christmas lights, welcoming visitors to the island as they cross the causeway from the adjacent Muhu island.

While last year, dozens of colored baubles brightened up the structure, this time around LED lights hanging down from a height of 23 meters also provide the steel mast the shape of a Christmas tree even in the dark, visible to anyone arriving in Saaremaa.

"I think this is Estonia's tallest, if not the Baltics' or Scandinavia's, but it is unique — and thanks to the fact that the overhead lines that used to be here, which endangered birdlife and spoiled Saaremaa's environment, were dismantled last year thanks to Elering's efforts. I hope this will bring joy to passersby here until Epiphany," Heiki Hanso, who decorated the "tree," told ERR.

Elsewhere in Orissaare borough, construction work had barred a genuine spruce tree from being decorated this year, so a different kind of Christmas tree was set up, using empty plastic canisters, outside the town's Coop supermarket.

"Seven to eight hundred of them in total. We had a collection basket in front of the service center — who brought them all, I don't know. And with the canisters, once we take them off the tree, that's not the end of it! We'll make screw holders and other things out of them. It's not like we just throw them all away," Krista Riik, head of the Orissaare service center, said.

In another case, old tractor tires have been stacked up and decorated (see gallery).

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