User claims nearly every tree is lit up as others slam food box celebrations

User says nearly every tree is lit up while others criticize the food boxes

In the jungle there is a tree with electricity. It is not a metaphor: someone on the other side of the screen says it without irony, "I have electricity in my tree," and clarifies that lights have been put on almost all of them. The scene sums up the issue better than any official statement: while one participant shows off the Christmas lighting, another criticizes families for celebrating the arrival of a food box worth less than 20 euros. According to that participant, the decorations have spread to nearly every tree.

What is known about the Christmas lighting

The central point is not the number of bulbs, but the interpretation placed on it. For some, the light display proves that the regime has leeway, resources and control of the territory: if it can afford to decorate every tree, it is not as strangled as the outside narrative claims. For others, it is exactly the opposite: an image operation that covers up everyday scarcity. A shopping alucinación that comes to under 20 euros in a European supermarket becomes the perfect counterpoint. Propaganda, they call it bluntly.

The discussion quickly drifts toward geopolitics. Some argue that the light display is a sign that the man in the palace has calculated there will be no ground military action, at least in the short term. The lighting would work as a thermometer: if the risk of intervention were high, no money would be spent on a shop window. The argument has its logic and its trap, because it can also be read the other way around, as a gesture of forced normality.

The electricity bill nobody breaks down

Here comes the most uncomfortable point. A country with documented power cuts cannot cheerfully light up half its territory. The question hanging in the air is where that electricity comes from and who is being deprived of it. There are no official figures in the conversation, but there is the intuition that the energy cost of such a display does not square with the discourse of forced austerity.

The contrast with the food box is brutal and deliberate. A family celebrating the arrival of products worth less than 20 euros coexists with radiant trees. The Christmas lighting is not an ornament: it is an economic indicator dressed up as festivity. And like any indicator, it allows two opposing readings depending on who is looking.

The U-turn from the one calling for intervention

The conversation takes a striking turn. The one who previously demanded forceful action against the regime now argues the opposite: that the moment has passed. The argument is that in 2017, or at the latest in 2019, the regime was weak and external pressure could have broken it; today, with the model consolidated, the choice is no longer between dictatorship and democracy, but between guaranteed order and chaos. The comparison thrown out is Ukraine before and after: the country of a famine is not the same as the country of decades later.

From there comes an uncomfortable thesis: once a regime becomes normalized and proves it guarantees stability, external pressure stops making sense and only generates losses. It is argued that initiatives from the other side no longer weaken the government, but instead harm those who do business and lose money because of the uncertainty. The lighting, in that framework, would be the visual proof that the standoff has been lost.

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One detail remains that throws everyone off: the tree with electricity. While it is debated whether the display is propaganda, a geopolitical thermometer or simple waste, someone boasts of having light on their tree, and that almost everyone else does too. The bill will arrive. No one will be surprised that it is not published.