Spruce Almighty: Picea abies and the Rockefeller Christmas Tree

It’s 2021, and I miss crowds.

There are the reasons one might find themselves in a crowd, of course: to see a play, to grab a drink, to board a train bound for somewhere new. But I suspect I miss the mechanics of a crowd—any crowd—most of all. The crush, the chaos, the peculiar coziness of being caught up in a human herd. I take secret pride, as an avowed introvert, in loving the company of a mass of people, in the odd sense of companionship to be found alongside strangers on the subway when there’s no elbow room to be had. I miss noise, being bumped into on a crowded crosswalk, having the back of my shoe stepped on, hastily jamming my heel back in place while reassuring the offender that it is “no worries!” (even when it did hurt a little bit). The sensory overload of a city street or a popular park, it resets my brain. I feel reflective there: thoughtful, energized, and activated. And while I’ve sought out and waded through many-a-crowd in my day, there’s nothing quite like the one that goes to see Rockefeller Center’s beloved Christmas tree.

As a Texan, the bar for my enjoying the experience is admittedly low (anything resembling “real winter” is de facto charming to those who grew up wearing shorts most Christmas afternoons, after all). But 45 Rockefeller Plaza in December is as classic-Winter-Wonderland as it gets. The first time I went—on a weekend critically close to Christmas—I probably spent just 20 seconds in front of the tree itself. I marveled over how big it really was and how many lights covered its branches (50,000 bulbs across five miles of wire, for the record [1]). I was struck by how imperfect it looked. Ice skaters circled the surprisingly small rink below, and I managed to catch a few laps before being issued a keep it moving! by one of the many police officers controlling traffic at the scene. I was swept by the current of the crowd, away from the tree and towards the plaza’s varied window displays. My audience with the tree at Rockefeller Plaza was up. I remember laughing at how out-of-my-hands the experience was, strategizing how best to get across the street to window shop at Saks, and wondering whether I’d be able to see (even on tippy toes?) over the heads of the many people aiming for the same. Heading for a street corner, the lights covering the storefront of the department store suddenly lit up, a castle dripping in icicles, its lights flashing dramatically in time with “Carol of the Bells” as speakers blasted overhead. I held my ground, best I could, to watch. One of hundreds, it felt special to be there.

Similar Christmas crowds have been flooding Rockefeller Center for nearly nine decades.

The tree typically receives 125 million visitors each season (2020 aside) but first stood for a smaller group of admirers—and before the Plaza even existed [1]. In 1931, the crew building the Rockefeller Plaza Complex, and their families, pooled together funds to raise a 20-ft Balsam fir in the middle of the construction site (and the Great Depression). They gathered together to receive their Christmas paychecks and dressed the tree in handmade garlands [1]. 1933 added the tree lighting ceremony [1], and the tradition has stuck: a tree, its trimmings, and the city’s celebrants, tourists and lifelong New Yorkers alike.

As everduring a symbol as they are evergreen, each tree has also managed to reflect the spirit and changes of its time. In 1951, the tree’s lighting was first televised [2]. In 1979, 27-year-old George Young scaled the tree’s branches in protest of the Iranian Hostage Crisis [2]. 2007 saw the tree cut a green new deal, switching to energy-efficient LED lights in a move then-Mayor Bloomberg called “an example of green leadership” [3]. In 2018, the present tree topper arrived, completing the tree’s look with a starburst composed of a mere 900 pounds of Swarovski crystal. The plaza has skipped the tree lighting for only one period: for the four years of WWII, blackout regulations kept the plaza dark, and three modest trees stood instead—one red, one white, and one blue—reflecting the austerity of the time [2]. Red, white, and blue again decorated the tree in 2001, following September 11 [2].

The spot today is memorialized by the Star of Hope, an electrified star that has been shining over the park since 1916.

Pausing under the tree’s branches or taking in its full frame from a less-crowded distance (if you’re lucky!) on 5th Avenue, the tree inspires, I think, a moment of reflection, of communion with the crowd in the square that day, and, for me, catharsis: what has this year meant? to me, to others? what was last winter like? and the one before? These questions don’t feel intimidating near a Christmas tree. I start being transported to Houston (where I’m from) to remember past trees and tree trimmings: to how I always wanted to help my dad tie the tree to the car’s roof on our way home from the Home Depot—even when I was much too short to do so; to when we would blast the soundtrack to Jim Carey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Cher’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” by family mandate every year as we hung ornaments; to my mom, my sister, and I setting up a sleepover by the tree after Christmas, always wondering in the dark, in the blinking of the multi-colored lights, why we didn’t do this more often...

I didn’t make it to Rockefeller Plaza this Christmas, but the tree succeeded in granting us all a very-2020 experience, nonetheless. When photos of the tree first started showing up on social media, it looked...unkempt is the kindest way to put it. Huge gaps in some branches and others squished uncomfortably together, the tree appeared to have just rolled out in its pajamas onto the flatbed truck transporting it from Oneonta, NY, teeth unbrushed, eyes half-open, hair in a rat’s nest that hadn’t been tended to in a while.

It’s no wonder the internet felt they could relate; "the Rockefeller Christmas tree, just like the rest of us, really been through things in 2020," said one podcast host [4]; and from Twitter: "Could the Rockefeller Christmas tree look any worse? 2020 on brand;" "In true 2020 form, the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree looks like it tried to cut its own hair" (@RexChapman, @HiChrisRyan, [5]). The tree fought back, insisting, through the @rockcenternyc’s Twitter account, that they look just about as good as anyone would "right after a two-day drive," before adding a challenge to "just wait until I get my lights on!"

In truth, getting any tree was a difficulty for most Americans this year: greater demand with many foregoing Christmas reunions to stay-at-home is one cause, the Québécois tree sellers who come to New York City for the season restricted from international travel another [6]. We even felt an aftershock from the 2008 recession this year; growers having planted fewer trees, trees that would’ve been ready for which Christmas but this one, ill-fated, perhaps, from the start [6].

If anyone’s prepared to make the best of a bad situation, however, perhaps it’s the trees themselves.

The Rockefeller tree is traditionally a Norway spruce (Picea abies) [1], a species with the astounding adaptation of advance regeneration [7]. Here, seedlings can essentially lie in wait, remaining in a stunted condition for years (similar to the arrested development that may be observed in orangutans, for my primate people). When a canopy gap opens—following a fierce, windy storm, for example—then the little trees really take off. Mature Norway spruce can easily reach 100 feet, growth aided by the species’ ability to be among the first plants “on the scene” and in the novel sunlight provided by the forest’s new opening [7]. This isn’t all we know about the Norway spruce: according to the USDA, it is the most intensively studied spruce in the world [8], and the first gymnosperm, or plant with open seeds rather than fruit, to have its genome fully sequenced [9]. To round out its accolades, it is one of the most economically important conifers in Europe as well [8], being used for timber, paper production, furniture, and musical instruments, among other purposes. One near-forgotten use I could see making a comeback, if only in a bar in Williamsburg, is the spruce beer. With only 7 pounds of spruce sap on hand and 3 gallons of molasses, you can recreate the recipe British General Jeffrey Amherst used to fortify his troops and stave off scurvy during the Revolutionary War, producing a tasting experience one modern brewer describes as “drinking turpentine mixed with Vicks” [10]. I will be sticking with my Texas holiday favorite, Shiner Cheer, thank you.

I suppose I had never given much thought to what a Christmas tree might represent other than...well, Christmas, or the winter season, but its resourcefulness does bring a favorite literary Christmas moment of mine to mind, one set along a sidewalk in New York, in Brooklyn one Christmas Eve. It’s in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (I know, again! But I promise this will (probably) be the last time it’s referenced here on Planted). The scene is set with young Francie, 10 years old, and Neely Nolan, 9, a crowd of other kids, and a tree seller at midnight. There was a “cruel custom” [11] in the neighborhood with regard to the evergreens left unsold by the night before Christmas, a strange twist on the Knock ‘em Down carnival game one might find at a rodeo or county fair. Rather than contestants stepping up to lob balls at a tower of milk jugs, here the kids were the milk jugs and the trees the whistling projectiles, thrown by the tree seller, one-by-one. Any child who managed to stay standing after a throw, got to take home the tree that hadn't felled them. Francie and Neely had never won, nor had they ever tried; they were small, and even the big boys in the neighborhood would often end the game scraped up and empty-handed. But Francie had seen “her” tree earlier in the day, 10 feet high and “the biggest tree in the neighborhood,” it had a “price [...] so high that no one could afford to buy it” [11]. When this tree came up to win, Francie stepped forward, nervously, with a “Me, Mister,” for the challenge [11]. The tree seller experienced a “Gethsemane” of guilt staring down the young girl, her brother alongside her, resolved and afraid. He reflected on why things had to work this way, why these kids had to fight for something ultimately of so little consequence. Then:

“As he threw the tree with all his strength, his heart wailed out, ‘it’s a God-damned, rotten, lousy, world!’” [11]

Francie and Neely won the tree, of course, and once it had been brought up to their small apartment its “branches spread out to fill the whole room.” They “draped over the piano, and it was so that some of the chairs stood among the branches” [11]. The year (each year, truly) had been a challenge for the children—but they’d been ready, they faced it down, and they came out on the other side.

2020 has felt like a barrage of Christmas trees flung across the sidewalk, right? For so many, it cannot neatly be reflected on, its lessons those of a morality tale or a story of perseverance. It’s ok if we still bear many of the marks from the trees pushing us to the curb. The new year isn’t a fully blank slate either, as promises to “return to normalcy” have been resoundingly replaced by wonderings of where the “new normal” will take us. But I do have a few parting thoughts to chuck at you as we prepare to meet (and forget) our New Year’s Resolutions for 2021. Perhaps this year is about return in some ways and repurposing in others. About regeneration and reflection, reinvention of plans we had to toss and reinvigoration of dreams that we can now begin tiptoeing to again. A year about renewal...and about remembrance.

Happy New Year. And see you on the other side.

An Epilogue...and an Introduction

With the new year comes old trees, the Rockefeller Christmas Tree included. But what happens to them when they become more of a fire hazard than a cozy piece to admire fireside? Out with the old and in with the...what exactly? Reuse—and ultimately regeneration—are the answer!

Rockefeller Plaza’s tree takes up a new purpose after the twelfth day of Christmas: for years, its mulch was donated to the Boy Scouts and its trunk, once chopped to manageable pieces, jumped over by Olympic horses, as practice for the US Olympic Equestrian Team [12]. For the past 13 years, 2x4s and 2x6s cut from the tree have been sent to Habitat for Humanity [12]. In most cases, this fine-grained and durable lumber goes to the state from which the tree was donated—an exception is the tree sent to Mississippi in 2007, part of a new home for a family displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Norway spruce can be used as flooring, furniture, and cabinetry, and signature pieces from the Rockefeller additions are often placed where the family in each home can clearly see them [12].

For those of us in New York City with trees slightly less than 100 ft tall (see my take on the Charlie Brown this year with my photo (above)), NYC Parks and the Department of Sanitation have given us #Mulchfest: a chance to “say fir-well to your holiday tree” from December 26 (who does that?) to mid-January each season [13]. By leaving your tree (stand-less and undecorated) on your curb on select days or by dropping it off across 67 locations in the five boroughs, you can help create mulch or compost for the city’s many parks [13]. I said goodbye to my tree this year in Astoria Park during one of MulchFest’s “Chipping Saturdays;” here, I watched the day-long grind of Christmas trees brought from all across the neighborhood, each disappearing into a massive mobile wood chipper brought on-site. Fifty thousand trees were recycled from the 2019 season in this way [13], a tradition no Scrooge could Bah Humbug!

Cited Sources

[1] Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree. Retrieved from https://www.rockefellercenter.com/holidays/rockefeller-center-christmas-tree-lighting/#viewing-details
[2] Schubak, A. (2020, December 15). Here’s What the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Looked Like the Year You Were Born.” Good Housekeeping. https://www.goodhousekeeping.com 
[3] Associated Press. (2007, November 21). LEDs will light up Rockefeller Christmas tree. CNN. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20071123161112/http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/11/21/green.christmas.ap/index.html
[4] Andrews, T. M. (2020, November 18). Rockefeller Center's scraggly Christmas tree is deemed 'a metaphor for 2020.' The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com
[5] Henderson, C. (2020, November 18). Peak 2020: Early Christmas cheer hilariously crushed by ‘saddest’ Rockefeller Center tree. USA Today. https://usatoday.com 
[6] Slotnik, D. (2020, December 16). Why Christmas Tree Sellers Feel Like Lucy at Her Psychiatrist Stand. The New York Times. https://nytimes.com
[7]  Fischer, A. (1992). Long term vegetation development in Bavarian Mountain Forest ecosystems following natural destruction. Vegetatio, 103, 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00047695 

[8] Sullivan, J. (1994). Picea abies. In: Fire Effects Information System, [Online]. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer). Available: https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/picabi/all.html 
[9] Nystedt, B., Street, N. R., Wetterbom, A., Zuccolo, A., Lin, Y., Scofield, D. G., Vezzi, F., Delhomme, N., Giacomello, S., Alexeyenko, A., Vicedomini, R., Sahlin, K., Sherwood, E., Elfstrand, M., Gramzow, L., Holmberg, K., Hällman, J., Keech, O., Klasson, L., …Jansson, S. (2013). The Norway spruce genome sequence and conifer genome evolution. Nature, 497, 579–584. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12211 
[10] Pfeiffer, K. (2012, June 11). New Brew - Spruce Beer. [Blog post] Retrieved from https://blackcreekbrewery.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/new-brew-spruce-beer-2/ 
[11] Smith, B. (1945) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
[12] Hudes, K. (2018, July 11). Where the Tree Goes Next. The Center Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.rockefellercenter.com/magazine/events/rock-center-christmas-tree-donation-habitat-for-humanity-interview/#viewing-details 
[13] NYC Parks. (2020). Mulchfest. Retrieved from https://www.nycgovparks.org/highlights/festivals/mulchfest

Additional Resources & Interesting Reads

On Rockie, the owl found in this year's tree!
Ravensbeard. (2020). Rockefeller the Owl. Ravensbeard Wildlife Center. Retrieved from https://ravensbeard.org/pages/rockefeller-the-owl-1

On NYC's First Public Christmas Tree
Cohen, M. (2016, December 12). 104 years ago, the nation’s first public Christmas tree went up in Madison Square Park. [Blog post] Retrieved from https://www.6sqft.com/104-years-ago-the-nations-first-public-christmas-tree-went-up-in-madison-square-park/

On Real vs. Artificial Christmas Trees
The American Christmas Tree Association (representing artificial trees): https://www.christmastreeassociation.org/
The National Christmas Tree Association (representing "real" trees): https://realchristmastrees.org/
Zraick, K. (2018, November 26). Real vs. Artificial Christmas Trees: Which Is the Greener Choice? The New York Times. https://nytimes.com 

On Stradivarius
Burckle, L., & Grissino-Mayer, H. D. (2003). Stradivari, violins, tree rings, and the Maunder Minimum: a hypothesis. Dendrochronologia, 21(1), 41-45. https://doi.org/10.1078/1125-7865-00033 
Koh, Y. (2011, June 21). Stradivarius Nets $16M for Japan Quake Relief. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com
The Met's Stradivari collection: "The Gould" Violin, "The Antonius" Violin, "The Francesca" Violin, and "The Batta-Piatigorsky" Violoncello

Image Credit

Black and white at Rockefeller Center: Zach Cooper on Unsplash
Rockefeller Christmas trees through the years: Getty Images/ Good Housekeeping
Concept design for Swarovski tree topper: Daniel Libeskind/ Rockefeller Center
Madison Square Park Christmas tree: Library of Congress
Madison Square Park Star of Hope: forgotten-ny.com
Picea abies Fast Facts photo: Sindre Boyum on Unsplash
Picea abies botanical illustrations: Wikipedia and forestryimages.org
Christmas tree and community, border: NYC Parks Department
Stradivari painting: Antonio Stradivari by Edgar Bundy (1893)
Violin: "The Gould" Violin, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Planted Header image: Utsman Media on Unsplash

All other images are my own.