For those who can't get enough of the holiday spirit, it is still possible to cure those New Year's blues -- with a nighttime walk through the borough of State College.

The white lights and holiday banners that were put up after Thanksgiving are still up -- over a month after Christmas. Many lights are still illuminating the town on a nightly basis, but some have been shut off.

Bob Price, executive director of Downtown State College Inc., said the reason the lights are still up is solely due to the weather. The ice and snow make it very dangerous for people to be up on ladders, he said.

"It's a very difficult process to put them up -- it's even a more difficult process to get them down," he said, adding that he is currently making plans to dismantle them as soon as possible.

The procedure of stringing the lights through branches is made more difficult by the trees' height, Price said, adding that electrical wiring is also a complex process.

Downtown State College Inc. had about 30 volunteers to string lights on about 80 trees in the borough, with the highest concentration of lighted trees on Allen Street and East College Avenue. The volunteers had to connect the lights into already existing photocells on light poles and install at least 30 new photocells where there were none, Price said.

To cover the cost of installation of the lights, store owners had to pay about $100 for every tree on their property, Price said, adding that the group does not make a profit from the project.

Some store owners decided not to shell out the money for the lights for various reasons.

"Times are tough," Price said. "In some instances, merchants just felt that they could not do it at this point."

Jennifer Young, manager of Wild Card, 346 E. College Ave., said her store did not put up lights on their property "because they're very expensive and our store wasn't doing well enough to pay for them," adding that she would have appreciated it if the borough had paid for the lights.

But Norm Brown, manager of the Student Book Store, 330 E. College Ave., did not mind the cost of the lights. Brown said the price was cheaper than what he paid last year when the store put up its own lights.

The lights in front of SBS are now off because, "When the governor called the state of emergency, I unplugged mine," Brown said.

But during the state of emergency two weeks ago, some of the lights remained on. Price said it was impossible to turn them off because they were connected to street lights.

Overall, Price said he has received substantial feedback on the decorations that were put up for the holidays, and he hopes to expand the program even further in the future.

"We've already gotten indication from people who didn't participate this year that will be participating next year," he said.

Price also said the borough has been trying to begin a permanent banner program. Downtown State College Inc. has 100 new banners with a downtown logo on them and hopes to have four or five banners other than the holiday ones that will be put up throughout the year.

"It's something to help identify the downtown district, and a sense of pride for the downtown," he said.