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Where Do Giant Christmas Tree Stars Go When They Die?
By
Claire Lampen
Published Nov 19, 2019
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Angela Pham/ BFA.com
By
Claire Lampen
Published Nov 19, 2019
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Do you now, or did you once, display a Christmas tree inside your home? If yes, do you — or did you — cap that sucker off with a big gaudy star? You know, something really sparkly, an ornament with major pizzazz, one that seeds golden glitter all over your scalp even though you only handled it for two minutes and it never touched your head? Or are/were you more into spearing an archangel atop your tree? Whatever your personal preference, I bet you recycled the same festive tree hat year after year, because it is your yuletide talisman and abandoning it for something shiny and new would surely bring a curse upon your house — the ghost of Christmas future (i.e., the one that's just death) would materialize at 3 a.m. to escort you to your grave.
So! Given the towering height of these stakes, you might assume that the most famous tree in town — the Norway spruce that lives at 30 Rockefeller Center — would wear the same star each year, right? ...right?!?!
Well! Reading about the Star Raising ceremony last week, I found my assumptions shaken. "A 900-pound Swarovski crystal star was raised by a crane and secured to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Wednesday morning," NBC New York reported.
"A" star; shouldn't that read "the" star? Unless... unless they opted for a new star this year, in which case the question would become: Does the 30 Rock arboreal committee commission a freshly bedazzled beacon each holiday season? And if so, how much does that cost, and is that staggering expenditure really responsible for a media company, in this economy? And what happens to the retired stars, after their moment in the sun subsides? Are they spirited into some magnificent and blinding storage unit, a diamanté vault buried deep in the bowels of NBC HQ? Are they stripped of their jewels and sold for parts? Are they moved to a private collection, or repurposed into a thousand smaller stars? Where do the stars go when they die?
There she is.
Angela Pham/BFA.com
Probably I am overthinking this simple sentence, but I have questions — and also demands, if in fact there's a star room situated somewhere inside 30 Rock, I would want Santa to lock me in the disco cabinet! But unfortunately, it appears I will have to find another way to wrangle that, because the star undergoes only occasional makeovers, and according to a Swarovski spokesperson, "There are no current plans for another redesign." This latest star, the one a coterie of workers hoisted atop the tree on November 13th, only debuted last year; the previous iteration lasted from 2004 to 2017. We're only on our second Swarovski-studded star: From 1955 to the 1990s, a white plastic star topped the tree — minimalist! — and in the 90s, we got a glitzy gold leaf one, in keeping with the more ostentatious times.
Like Celine Dion, the star has only become more glamorous with the passage of time. Swarovski partnered with Rockefeller Center in 2004, birthing the crystal star, which was subsequently revamped through the miracle of light technology. Polish-American architect Daniel Libeskind redesigned the star for 2018, giving us a 900-pound behemoth with 70 mighty spikes spewing from its heart. These, in turn, are crusted with 3 million double-cone crystals ("more facets and sparkle than single cone crystals") and enhanced by special LED lighting. For Libeskind, the star represents "the beauty of starlight," beaming "meaning and mystery into the world." Because, and sorry to tell you something you already know, "There is nothing more fantastic, enigmatic, mysterious, and wondrous than a star!"
Nothing! Well, except maybe the cost of this particular star, which the Swarovski rep declined to disclose. In any case, it appears this man-made sun eclipsed its predecessor, which has been relegated to a storage unit.
Libeskind's star will get its special holiday glow on Wednesday, December 4th, during the inaugural tree lighting ceremony. This year's sacrificial specimen is a 12-ton Norway spruce from Florida, New York. At 77 feet, she's about one short adult taller than Shelby, last year's 72-foot tree, and measures a girthy 46 feet across. For now, it looks like the star is settling in nicely:
*chef's kiss*
Angela Pham/ BFA.com
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rockefeller center christmas tree
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christmas tree
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Claire Lampen
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