A replacement Christmas tree for the village green is reportedly coming to Woodstock on Wednesday. The much-maligned previous one is gone.
Town supervisor Bill McKenna’s wife Hilary wrote on Facebook, “Change is afoot for the village green this week. Stay tuned.”
While a town’s Christmas tree is a source of civic pride and a gathering place for celebration all over America, the one that arrived on Woodstock’s village green this year became the butt of innumerable jokes, memes on social media, and a hot topic of discussion at local eateries.
The arrival of Woodstock’s new Christmas tree (video)
The now-removed 14-foot tree was missing its top and several branches. It looked as though it has lost a knock-down, drag-out fight with a neighboring tree. Resisting being dragged from its home, the sad evergreen had been dropped more than once on its way to the village green and was broken in two places, accounting in no small part for its amputated visage.
The haphazard lighting suggested a net of lights had been thrown over the poor tree in an attempt to subdue it.
This sad specimen was as far as could be imagined from the impressive trophy tree carefully decorated with family ornaments depicted in the Christmas movies of the past. What was the meaning of this holiday statement from the most famous small town in the nation?
A pseudonymous Woodstocker superimposed on a photo of the tree, “Welcome to Woodstock, New York, where even the trees aren’t normal.”
Harder and harder
Who was responsible?
“I don’t know,” said town supervisor Bill McKenna. “The incoming highway superintendent, Donald Allen, went over and picked one out, and the guys went over and picked it up last week. That’s as much as I know.”
Each year, the tree is picked out by the Christmas Eve Committee, the volunteer group that runs the Christmas Eve parade and arrival of Santa on the village green. The town government takes responsibility for transporting the tree and setting it up on the green.
Sometimes, a property owner donates a tree. Other years, the volunteers seek one out.
“They are getting much harder to find, though,” McKenna said. “In years past, they used to grow up in brush lots and whatnot, and they would grow up unobstructed. Now they grow up and they’re tangled with other trees, and it’s just getting harder and harder to find a decent, good-sized tree. Which begs the question. Maybe we have to start going with smaller trees and just accept the fact that these big local trees are not easily obtained.”
The village green used to have a permanent tree, but it was removed after vandals damaged it in the mid-1990s.
“Beyond the concern of vandalism, the other issue is that a tree there in the middle of that beautiful space, while it would look great at Christmas, for the rest of the year that space is wide open for the drumming circle and other events,” McKenna recalled.
The wrong tree?
Highway superintendent-elect Allen offers a different version of events. McKenna had tasked acting highway superintendent Heather Eighmey with finding a tree, Allen said. He decided to help Eighmey with the tree search.
According to Allen, he selected a tree with McKenna from a tree farm in Dutchess County.
During transport to town and setup, some maintenance department employees broke the top and several branches on one side, said Allen. He felt the crew didn’t have sufficient manpower to do the job without damage.
McKenna said the tree that arrived in Woodstock was the wrong tree.
McKenna and Allen agree the tree travesty has distracted people from weightier town issues . The memes and comments come fast and furious.
On Facebook, Heather Nicole posted a picture, and Adam Miller added a pair of eyes, and a big red-tongued mouth.
Some defended the tree, saying it was the thought that counted and comparing it to Charlie Brown’s sparse tree in the Peanuts Christmas special.
Filmmaker Chris Finlay, who has been critical of McKenna’s handling of contaminated fill in Shady, said the tree was a symbol of how the town was run.
“Is Woodstock’s Christmas tree now in the center of our town a true reflection of our town leadership?” Finlay asked. “It’s cheap, badly broken, lacking in creativity, class, imagination, pays no attention whatsoever to detail, and its flaws are poorly covered up.”
Let there be lights
Most populated places in the United States now make their civic Christmas trees an important part of their celebration of this major seasonal holiday. The civic tree, a Boston Globe reporter explained more than a decade ago, was a unifying symbol of civility promoted in the early twentieth century by progressive reformers, to whom public Christmas trees “could express faith, but also stoke feelings of civic pride, promote religious tolerance and inclusion.”
Choosing the tree and dressing it up appropriately became an important symbolic expression of civic pride. Rockefeller Center in New York City trucked in a twelve-ton, 80-foot-tall Norwegian spruce from near Binghamton this year. That tree now has 50,000 lights fed by five miles of wires.
Mayor Eric Adams attended the ceremonial lighting on November 29. The major networks covered the event. Barry Manilow and Kelly Clarkson performed. Demonstrators in support of Palestine tried to storm the stage, causing a 20-minute delay.
Woodstock’s annual tree lighting is a wee bit more modest than New York City’s. Like with the appearance of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, the community Christmas tree is the responsibility of a small group of volunteers who take on the task of making it a success. And they get blamed for the result.
Let those Woodstockers who consider this particular expression of community outdated and obsolete – be they few or many — come up with a more contemporary alternative celebration of Woodstock community life.
In the meantime, the town government has a 2024 budget a few dollars short of ten million. That’s per-capita spending north of $1500 per year for every man, woman and child. Do the kids deserve better than this year’s tree?
The powers that be may not have had access to a local Christmas tree farm. The top five nearby Christmas tree farms recommended by Yelp, each awarded five stars, are in Accord. Rhinebeck, Cairo, Staatsburg and Highland.
Rumors of a GoFundMe campaign to help the beleaguered town government regain some measure of civic pride could not be confirmed.
— Geddy Sveikauskas
Join the family! 
