Rome's Annual Christmas Tree Debacle

Is it really that hard to put up a tree?

Il Spenacchio, or Toilet Brush, of 2017. Photo by AffariItaliani

Writers tend to see metaphors in almost everything. Trump’s hair, for instance, which looks as though rats nested, bore young, and then died. It’s an obvious symbol for the way he attracts vermin and puppeteers them into doing the dirty work of being Trump. Or son-in-law Jared Kushner’s pearly, luminescent skin, not unlike the underbelly of a snake, as a token for the oleaginous way he has of slipping around rocks and various federal laws, all in pursuit of prey profit.

You see? Metaphors.

But rarely was seen a more compelling metaphor for the sad state of Rome’s pot-holed, trash-strewn streets than its 2017 Christmas tree, whose nickname, Il Spelacchio, means “mange.” It was but one in a string of disastrous Christmas trees that seem to befall The Eternal City, each one worse than the year previous.

Mange died immediately upon reaching its final destination in front of an enormous monument to Victor Emanuel II (an eyesore to most Romans, who in their typically humorous way, call it “the wedding cake,” “the dentures,” or “the typewriter.”).

In an attempt to keep the threadbare tree erect, the city authorities poured concrete over its roots, basically choking the life out of it and then sealing it inside a tomb.

Dentures.

It didn’t help that then-mayor Virginia Raggi, a Five-Star Movement candidate that had been swept into office on a wave of anti-establishment zealotry, was already facing allegations of corruption and nepotism. Or that a rash of city buses had spontaneously exploded and then turned into rolling chariots of death. Or that wild boar were roaming the city’s streets, unchecked. Her failure to produce even one decent Christmas tree seemed to be an echo of other failures of her administration.

Some of us will remember the sad little tree from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

The tree cost tax-strapped Italians the equivalent of $57,000, and they were determined to make the most of a bad situation. While its once-green needles continued to fall … well, not exactly like pennies from heaven … a rash of social media accounts sprang up, each purporting to “speak” for the anthropomorphized tree. In one tweet, Spelacchio sighed, “Sadness be with you all.” In another: “I have more followers than branches.”

Spelacchio, like Rome itself, had its supporters. Some left notes on its sad, dead, concrete roots reassuring it of their love. But as far as PR for Rome as a city of taste and sophistication, Spelacchio was a blow. Word reached as far abroad as The New York Times, which wrote about the contretemps whilst reminding everyone that it was an Italian immigrant named Cesidio Perruzza, who worked as an excavator in New York City, that dug the foundation for the first Rockefeller Center tree on Dec. 24, 1931.

Workers—Italian immigrants, mostly—excavating Rockefeller Center to erect the now-traditional Christmas tree on Dec. 24, 1931. Photo credit: Associated Press.

Then a columnist with the daily newspaper, La Stampa, wrote a front-page editorial from Spelacchio’s point of view that managed to both vindicate the tree and cast shade on the city of Rome—no small feat. “You have a dark, chaotic, dirty city, you throw everything on the ground, nothing works and tourists are supposed to think it’s all my fault,” Spelacchio groused in La Stampa. “Look, I am not a metaphor of Italy. It’s you.”

In 2021, everybody in Rome had high hopes for the new mayor Roberto Gualtieri’s tree. This was going to be the year that made up for the calamity of Spelacchio, especially since Gualtieri decided to team up with Italian Netflix.

Like so many noble alberi before it, this tree hearkened from the Lombardy region, 416 miles north of the capital. At 75-feet, it was too big to transport on Italy’s narrow mountain roads, so it had to be chopped almost in half and then Frankensteined back together again at destination.

The Rome newspaper, Il Messaggero, in a fine example of the sputtering indignation I have come to expect and enjoy from Italy’s most august publications, said the tree had been “disassembled and reassembled like a piece of IKEA furniture.” This inspired clever Italians to then refer to the tree as Spezzacchio, which is a slangy variation on the Italian verb “to break.”

The tree was simply vile.

In an effort to “go green,” or at least appear so, Netflix had decided to use LED lights, 60,000 of them, which gave the tree a look of cold, glittering menace. It was decorated with hundreds and hundreds of bulbs, many of them stamped with a big red N. Arranged around the tree were seventeen festively wrapped boxes, each one with a QR code that people could scan to read suggestions on “how to make Rome more sustainable.” Box 12, for instance, primly advised people to “support socially responsible and ethical brands, donate old clothes to charity and buy second-hand.”

Uh, thanks?

It was the most garbage-y corporate-speak Christmas tree Rome had ever had.

Go ahead and hold up your phone to the QR code for a fun n’ festive lecture on “sustainability.”

It was said to have cost Netflix $430,000, and although I have absolutely no evidence of wrongdoing, if I were to someday read an article that revealed how Netflix had been taken for the proverbial ride, I would not be in the least bit shocked.

Romans dubbed this “braggart, imposter” tree Spettacolo, or “Spectacle,” joking that it had gone to Hollywood and taught Brad Pitt how to believe in himself before condescendingly befriending Catherine Zeta Jones. According to its very tongue-in-cheek Twitter account, Christian Bale had reached out to Spettacolo for diet tips.

But what the Netflix tree proved itself to be, above all else, was a tasteless corporate gimmick. If anything, 2017’s Spelacchio (wags had also called it a Spenacchio or “toilet brush) came out ahead. At least people pitied it.

Now, we have 2022’s “zero impact” Photovoltacchio (able to produce electricity from light) Christmas tree, and it may be the ugliest one of all.

Giant solar panels make it impossible to stand anywhere near 2022’s Christmas tree.

I get that Europe is in the grip of a recessive economy and a war in Ukraine. I get that power is expensive, and cost-saving measures must be taken. But I’m equally certain that enough money exists in the city’s exchequer to cough up for a tree that isn’t mangy, isn’t festooned in tacky Netflix ornaments, and doesn’t need to be nailed back together again. Just a nice traditional Christmas tree. Seriously. I don’t think that’s asking too much.

In one of the only instances where I agree with a member of the right-wing Lega, a regional leader said, “After Spelacchio comes Photovoltacchio. Where is the real magic of Christmas in Rome? How is it possible that the capital of Italy can’t come up with a worthy and beautiful fir tree, just like all the other major cities on the planet?”

And yet, this, too, is a metaphor for our times. We have run mad trying to appear as though we’ve chosen green initiatives but without making any kind of real sacrifice. The idea of “green” has either been corporately coopted or sent like one big virtue signal to the rest of the world, showing how eco-conscious we are. But it isn’t the corporations themselves that are retooling the way they do business. Once again, it’s the people who pay the biggest price.

All they wanted was a Christmas tree.

Instead, what they got was a metaphor.

Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin

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