In pictures: Christmas tree world

It's a Christmas tree but perhaps not as we know it - a 40m (131-foot) giant in the Spanish Basque Country.

Conventional Christmas trees - like the expanding one in Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker ballet - just seem to get bigger. This one stands at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

As with Berlin's tree, the one rivalling Nelson's Column on London's Trafalgar Square is a gift from Norway.

In another European capital, Rome, a Christmas tree has been erected for the first time at the Coliseum

The Italian town of Gubbio has a giant Christmas tree picked out in lights on nearby Mount Ingino.

This is one tree you would not want to knock over: a 8.5-m (28-foot) creation by the glass workers of Murano, Venice.

Russia had "New Year's Trees" in Soviet times. This year, Moscow's Red Square boasts a giant artificial tree but the decoration looks fairly traditional.

This tree in Rio de Janeiro is not only artificial - it even floats, moored on the Brazilian city's Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon.