Do You See Watt I See?

There’s a wealth of interesting information about the National Christmas Tree and its associated “Pageant of Peace” within a massive Wikipedia entry that numbered a whopping 31 (ironically tree-killing) pages when I printed it out. And that didn’t count all the pages of footnotes I elected not to print.

I discovered, for instance, that this heartwarming symbol of nation unity and peace on Earth was a product of pure capitalism, conceived in the 1920s by an electric-industry trade group to promote its fledgling product. I learned that attendance lagged at the annual lighting ceremony during the years when President Truman flipped a remote switch from Independence, Missouri. This forced Harry to return to the White House for the 1952 lighting—a development about which he presumably was not wild. I found out that the 1969 and 1971 lighting ceremonies were disrupted by hecklers—Vietnam War protesters in the first case and nattering nabobs of anti-Spiro Agnew negativism in the second, because the vice president was doing the honors that year. I also learned that in 1978, First Daughter Amy Carter took a break from advising her dad about the dangers of nuclear proliferation in order to begin a First- or Second-Family tradition of topping off the tree with an ornament.

(If you’re counting, that’s a least three references in one paragraph—“wild about Harry,” a Spiro Agnew quote and a President Carter statement—that no reader under 50 likely will understand. Fortunately, if that's the right word, I probably haven't a single reader in that demographic.)

To me, the key page of the Wikipedia entry is number 20, which features a photograph that literally illustrates what I perversely love about the National Christmas Tree and its trappings—which occupy (currently, but not always) a small square of land on the Ellipse just south of the White House in the heart of Washington, DC.  That one photograph both solved a mystery for me and hints at—without quite telling the whole story—the big, ugly, but amusing truth about the whole operation that Wikipedia declines to acknowledge. That truth is this: The National Christmas tree, and everything that surrounds it, is hideously, godawfully tacky.

Let me to describe to you the photograph to which I’m referring. (Because, as you know unless you’re the very rare newcomer to this site, I’m too low-tech and lazy to have any idea how to post photographs, or even to have much interest in doing so. Use your damn imagination, and get the hell off my lawn.) The photo shows a big evergreen (or fir, or whatever) that’s trapped inside a framework of mesh wiring. Beside it sit a couple of wood crates on which the words “National Tree Train” are written. The photo caption reads as follows: “The model railroad train is ready to be unpacked and set up at the base of the 2012 US National Christmas Tree. An undecorated ‘state tree’ is to the right.”

Where to start? First, I alluded above to a “mystery.” I’d been wondering in recent years if I’d only thought the National Christmas Tree was an actual tree, as opposed to what it really looks like against the night sky: a huge triangular mass of lights resembling a monster version of the gaudy aluminum trees Snoopy hawks in the Charlie Brown Christmas special while the horrified round-headed kid decries the commercial greed-fest Christmas has become.

I mean, I seemed to remember, walking through the Ellipse at other times of year, there being a real, living tree at that spot. But then, every December when I’d arrive to marvel at the obscene Vegas-of-the-East spectacle that is the Pageant of Peace—with its giant, formless, zillion-watt “tree;”  its rows of smaller, bland, identical-looking "state" trees; its mixed-messages side-by-side nativity scene and Santa’s workshop; its fascinatingly Hades-like fire pit (an apocalyptic conflagration that seemingly might at any moment jump its hole and threaten the presidential mansion); and a jerry-rigged stage on which amateur-hour entertainers churned out holiday standards over a bad sound system—I’d see zero evidence of an actual living pine tree. In fact, the star of this yearly light show looks like nothing so much as the wet dream that had consumed Coolidge-era power-industry executives: Complete obliteration of the natural world, replaced by a constellation of glorious artificial light.

When I saw that photograph on the Wikipedia page (a quick aside: I don’t go to Wikipedia for evidence-based facts, but I do seek it out for the kind of detail that only obsessive citizen-researchers will happily spent vast volunteer hours compiling) it confirmed what I’d sort of suspected, but what had seemed too weird to quite believe: There really IS a tree underneath those uniform strings of diagonal lights and ornaments. But that living organism is utterly undecorated and dark. It is the irrelevant guts of a bedazzling, 100% -fake superstructure.

This bit of Internet intelligence reinforced everything that, to me, is bizarrely wonderful about the Pageant of Peace—despite the sad absence nowadays of the Yule log/fire pit, which was bulldozed in 2012 as allegedly incompatible with a reconfigured “site plan,” according to the National Park Service, which oversees the site. (I’m guessing what really happened was that President Obama suddenly realized in December 2011, gazing from his back portico to the Circle of Hell raging almost literally in his backyard, “There is a freaking inferno just beyond a flimsy fence that millions of right-wing nuts who irrationally hate me easily could stoke and fan in my direction.” Whereupon a presidential order was issued to fill in the pit, ideally with NRA President Wayne Lapierre having been thrown into it beforehand.)

I again lamented the fire pit’s absence this past Sunday night, when I made my annual pilgrimage to the site. I also didn’t see the nativity scene or Santa’s workshop, for that matter. But it’s possible I missed them both, as the crowds were crushing and there was a tented area to which I never got. (Another great irony is that the Pageant of Peace—a term coined in the 1950s to emphasize the “goodwill toward men” biblical aspect of Christmas—isn’t remotely peaceful. The place is packed with locals and tourists chattering away in a multitude of languages. You can’t move an inch without somebody’s camera-phone nearly hitting you in the eye. And the musical acts intermittently add a further level of noise.)

Still, this time as every year, there was much for me to enjoy. The central “tree” was every bit as blindingly, geometrically absurd as always. The 56 smaller trees (one for each state, the District of Columbia and five US territories), though in theory uniquely decorated, again looked thoroughly uniform. This is because—as presumably dictated by the Park Service—all the lighting and decoration is standardized, except for a few clear plastic ornaments on each tree that contain drawings or other artwork that’s been created by schoolchildren from that state, district or area. The problem is, given the size of the ornaments and the lighting, it’s nearly impossible to discern these unique details even upon close inspection—let alone from any distance. This is another compelling feature of the ludicrous spectacle that is the Pageant of Peace.

Then there are the trains—per that photo on the Wikipedia page. There’s not just one set of train tracks laid at the base of the National Christmas Tree. There are several. They collectively form a crazy quilt of locomotive madness, with trains chugging through a zig-zaggy landscape of toy villages and scenery that defies rhyme or reason. It is as if the Park Service noted the empty space surrounding the Triangle of Electricity and summoned a particularly disorganized model train enthusiast from his basement lair to please populate the area. Don’t get me wrong: Kids, even in 2015, love choo choos—as do nostalgic adults. I heard many happy exclamations. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the trains, per se. What I am saying that they add to the air of vaguely themed chaos.

This year’s music didn’t disappoint, either. While I don’t wish to disparage the generous donation of time by unpaid musicians and singers, who brave the weather to entertain the throngs—and it was actually cold Sunday night, atypical of this global-warming December—the Park Service always seems to get exactly the level of talent it doesn’t pay for. What I heard a few nights ago was a brass band that sounded like a Victorian nightmare—the kind of ensemble that might have propelled scared-straight Ebenezer Scrooge straight back to deep-humbug mode.

The brass band’s missed notes still echoed in my ears as I turned around, en route to my car, to give the National Light Show, 2015 edition, one last look. What is it that I cherish so about this crazy conglomeration of clutter, this national Hoarders episode? For one thing, it’s resoundingly retro in this increasingly too-cool-for-school world of super-high-tech gadgetry. There’s nothing sleek or sophisticated about this annual event. It remains, by and large, the same as it ever was. Furthermore, it actually forces people to get out of their houses and cars, put on their coats, and stand around outside.

As corny as it sounds, the Pageant of Peace really does, too, succeed, at least in a small way, in promoting goodwill on Earth. It brings people together in one place at one time to enjoy something—and to momentarily leave behind all the rancor and vitriol that increasing poisons America and the world. It scarcely matters whether that enjoyment springs from love of God, electricity, trains or timeless (call it evergreen) tackiness. It just makes a body feel good.

In that, it’s something of an annual Christmas miracle.