I watched the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree Wednesday night, and a question occurred to me. It will be “lit” every night until at least January 1. I would assume that during that time, some/many of the thousands of lights will burn out. Do they (attempt to) replace them? Do they use special long-lasting bulbs? Do they re-use the same lights every year?
I would assume that the bulbs would burn out no more often than those on your home Christmas tree. Which is a very small proportion of them. Sure, with that many lights total, that small proportion might seem like a large absolute number, but it’s the proportion that matters: Nobody would ever even notice one dark bulb, or a hundred, out of that many.
This web site indicates that they use roughly 50,000 lights on the tree, and that they have used LED bulbs (which have longer lifespans than incandescent bulbs) since 2007. It also indicates that many of the current LED light strands have been in use on every tree since that changeover.