Evergreen summary

Imagine if extraterrestrials paid a visit to Earth at Christmas. Imagine the scene through their eyes – countless trees vanishing from forests, then reappearing in houses and shop windows, covered in shining decorations.

To visitors from another planet, it might seem that they’d stumbled across some sort of cult – a civilization that worships evergreens. And they wouldn’t be entirely wrong. Around the world, Christmas trees have come to define the season.

In New York City, just after Thanksgiving, crowds gather outside the Rockefeller Center to watch as a huge evergreen tree is decorated with 50,000 lights.

This particular tradition began in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. One winter, construction workers at the Rockefeller Center were facing tough times, and they needed something to celebrate. The workers pooled together their money and bought a twenty-foot fir, decorating it with simple garlands and tin cans. This humble Christmas tree was a symbol of hope and resilience.

Over the years, the Rockefeller tree became taller and shinier. It’s now a public ritual, and as much a part of American Christmas as Santa Claus.

In the lead-up to Christmas, the head gardener at the Rockefeller Center is tasked with finding the perfect tree – one with “personality.” Once the tree has been selected, and inspected for structural integrity, it’s cut down and carefully transported to Manhattan. The convoy is sometimes led by police escorts, and followed by camera crews.

After the tree has been erected and decorated, there’s the tree-lighting ceremony – a spectacle attended by hundreds of thousands of people, while about 7 million viewers watch at home.

But despite these celebrations, by this point, the evergreen tree itself has become almost incidental, overshadowed by everything else. Few people consider the deeper significance of the Christmas tree.

And by mid-January, it’s all over. The once-iconic tree is taken down and dismembered, to begin another career as floorboards or picnic tables.

There’s something poignant about the ephemeral nature of the Christmas tree – so important for one month of the year, then gone and forgotten for the rest. These trees represent both a celebration and a farewell.