Rebecca Decker thought the Rockefeller Center garden team was pulling her leg when they asked for her Norway spruce.
Decker, a young mother of three, had been living with the 76-foot evergreen in her West Edmeston yard for five years and had actually considered chopping it down over safety fears before tree boss Erik Pauze came knocking. “I thought that he was absolutely joking,” she told the TODAY show Friday. “I was like, ‘I live in the middle of nowhere.’ I definitely thought it was fake at first.”
Pauze had been tracking the titanic timber since 2020, well before Decker even purchased the property. The spruce was originally planted 75 years ago by Carl Camenga, the home’s original builder and owner, who died on Christmas Day ten years ago, according to WBNG News 12. Decker and her children moved in five years ago, inheriting the towering legacy Camenga had left rooted in the rural yard roughly an hour from Cooperstown.
The connection that sealed the deal came from an unexpected source. Jackie and Matt McGinley, who donated the 2023 Rockefeller Christmas Tree, reached out to Pauze in June with a tip. “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.”
Pauze deemed the size “perfect” for the Midtown plaza, and the spruce was uprooted from Decker’s yard Thursday morning.
The tree’s journey to Manhattan marks the unofficial start of the Big Apple’s holiday season. It will roll into Midtown Saturday and later appear in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade before its official lighting on Dec. 2. The ceremony will feature 50,000 crystals and a Swarovski star crowning the evergreen.
Decker plans to make the four-hour drive with her kids to witness the lighting, though parting with the family favorite stings. “I’m actually a little sad to see it leave now,” she 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.”
Christmas holds special weight for the household, making the donation both a gift to the city and a personal sacrifice.
The 2024 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting is scheduled for Dec. 2 in New York City.