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New York's 'Tannenbaums'

December 11, 2009

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, emblazoned with energy efficient LEDS and partly powered by solar panels this year, serves as New York's most iconic Christmas tree. Tourists from around the globe will snap perhaps millions of photos in front of the 76-foot Norway spruce from Connecticut before its is taken down on Jan 7.

But New York offers a variety of other Christmas trees as well -- and not just in your apartment and on corner stands. Origami bedecks the tree (above) at the Museum of Natural History. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is not as much the 20-foot blue spruce itself as the more than 200 Neapolitan crèche figures that have encircled its base for the last 40 years. Every year the figures and arrangement changes somewhat.

Perhaps befitting its status and wealth, Park Avenue will not be content with one tree. Strings of light decorate dozens of the cherry and hawthorn trees along the avenue down the avenue from Carnegie Hill all the way down to 48th Street.

Not surprisingly, the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx has many trees -- some decorated and some not -- for the holidays but it also offers its annual holiday train show with a mini New York City created of natural materials.

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