OHHHHH (No) Christmas Tree

We are well aware the kind of year it’s been: awful, insane, melancholy, 2X speed, restrictive, masked, sanitized. And that just describes Spring. So it was with joyous hope that NYC residents and revelers from around the world looked to last week’s seminal arrival of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree as harkening to an American Promise liberally ornamented with shiny belief and unbounded optimism. What the famed Rockefeller Plaza and gape-jawed onlookers received instead some might say prophetically — and pitch perfectly — encapsulated the year that WAS. One observer zinged that it looked as if the Tree had given itself a haircut. Yet another summed it up dismissively in the only way a New Yorker could: “Bruhhhh, THAT Tree is Trash!” Well, said witness is NOT wrong, at least at first glance. While some might look at this Tree and conclude that we just can’t have nice things in 2020, Rockefeller Center officials say we needn’t worry. That this is what all past Rockefeller Christmas Trees look like after slumbering through a betwined, 200 mile icy trip from Upstate New York under the cover of darkness. Al Dick, who sold the 200-ton Tree to Rockefeller Center, dismisses all talk of this being New York’s Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. Al said that after a few days of normal branch settling it will balloon out into a full and beautiful tree. We’ll just have to take him at his word on that. Like there aren’t such things as prosthetic Norway Spruce branches, right? Tune in December 2nd to the Rockefeller Christmas Tree lighting on NBC to find out.

Anyhow, one early gift the Tree offered onlookers was a baby Saw-Whet owl who apparently could not resist the allure of the Big Apple. Who among us can, really. Appropriately named Rockefeller, the owl was given an Abbott Labs rapid-result Covid Test (LOL) and safely transported to a wildlife center in Saugerties where he enjoys an unlimited conveyance of fluids and dead mice. Ohhhhh Christmas Tree, indeed!