New House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Monday that he would light up the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree on Wednesday, Dec. 2.
The Capitol tree is a 74-foot Lutz spruce from Alaska’s Chugach National Forest, and it traveled for more than three weeks and 4,000 miles to get to the West Lawn of the Capitol. It’s the first ever tree from Alaska.
The Capitol Christmas Trees have gotten taller over the years. When the tradition started in 1964, a 24-foot Douglas Fir from Pennsylvania was used, according to the Architect of the U.S. Capitol, which keeps track of the trees.
The tree size increased to 30 feet by 1968 and and 45 feet by 1971.
The tallest trees were an Engleman Spruce and a White Spruce, both 88-footers, displayed in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The Forest Service plays a key role in selecting the tree, which is carefully measured, photographed and mapped for the Capitol architect.
“The ideal tree is 60 to 90 feet tall. It must be healthy, have good growth and density, and be rich in color,” the architect’s office wrote in describing the process. “The tree must be straight and perfectly conical in shape.”
The tree is decorated with as many as 5,000 ornaments made mostly by school children from the state that provides the tree.
Ryan, in announcing the first photo of the tree taken from the Speaker’s Balcony, pointed out that after 1913, when a tree was displayed on the East Front, the Capitol stopped the tradition.
It resumed in 1962, when, weeks after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, House Speaker John McCormack, of Massachusetts, placed a decorated Christmas tree in Statuary Hall on the second floor of the Capitol. The tree included a sign that read “Peace on earth, good will to men.”
