A 75-year-old Norway spruce from a yard in West Edmeston, Madison County, has been selected as this year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree — and the woman who donated it says she initially assumed the whole thing was a joke.
Rebecca Decker told NBC’s TODAY show Friday that she was stunned when Rockefeller Center’s head gardener, Erik Pauze, showed up at her door to ask about the 76-foot evergreen standing in her yard.
“I thought that he was absolutely joking,” Decker said. “I was like, ‘I live in the middle of nowhere.’ I definitely thought it was fake at first.”
The tree was uprooted from Decker’s property Thursday morning. It had been planted 75 years ago by Carl Camenga, the original builder and owner of the home, who died on Christmas Day ten years ago, according to WBNG News 12.
Decker and her three children moved into the West Edmeston home, located roughly an hour from Cooperstown, five years ago. She had even considered having the towering spruce cut down out of concern it might eventually fall — before Pauze came calling.
Pauze said the tree’s size was “perfect,” and revealed he’d had his eye on it since 2020. He wasn’t working alone in spotting it, either. Jackie and Matt McGinley, who donated the 2023 Rockefeller tree, tipped him off to the Decker property in June.
“I look at the [text], and it said, ‘Hey, take a look at this tree.’ And I look at the address, and I’m like, ‘Wait a second, I know that address.’ And sure enough, it was this tree,” Pauze said. “And you know what? That was confirmation that this tree belongs at Rockefeller Center.”
The spruce is set to arrive in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday, officially marking the start of New York City’s holiday season. It will appear in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, though it won’t be lit until the official tree lighting on Dec. 2, when it will be decorated with 50,000 crystals and topped with a Swarovski star.
Decker said she plans to make the roughly four-hour drive from Madison County to Manhattan with her children for the lighting ceremony. Christmas is the family’s favorite holiday, she said, making the tree’s departure bittersweet.
“I’m actually a little sad to see it leave now,” Decker said. “Now I don’t really know how the yard’s going to look without it. It’s definitely going to be a conversation for a little while.”
