Sandy Hook’s Too-Big Christmas Tree

It’s not exactly a forest. It’s a tree. Its owner is the Newtown Forest Association (NFA), which is learning quickly that this isn’t just any tree. It’s Sandy Hook Center’s Christmas Tree. Too many people have too many good memories of meeting, shopping, singing, and laughing in its soft glow during those dark days around the winter solstice to simply dispose of it like any other overgrown tree in a crowded spot.

A proposal by the NFA to revamp the site of the 35-foot-tall tree — the minipark called The Glen at the corner-confluence of Church Hill Road, Riverside Road, Glen Road, Washington Avenue, and the Pootatuck River — calls for “updated” plantings and a kiosk. In the case of the Christmas tree, updated means much smaller, which is pretty much an impossibility for a healthy growing fir tree. So the plan is for the tree to be cut down and replaced.

The improvements would coincide with town plans to enhance and extend Sandy Hook Center’s much appreciated streetscape later this spring and summer. Street alignments, new curbs, and street signal and utility reconfigurations will make the center a busy place, and we understand and appreciate NFA’s interest and excitement over being a part of it. The tiny park could use some tending to, but sprucing up by cutting down a fir tree seems a bit perverse.

Last week, association President Bob Eckenrode reported to town officials that it is the NFA’s assessment that the tree is “way too big,” which from a landscape designer’s perspective is probably true. In the view of many Sandy Hookers, however, the tree will never be big enough to fully illuminate their growing pride in the village center. The rationale proffered by the NFA’s arborist — that the tree could begin to deteriorate in coming years — seems more of an existential than botanical consideration. Exactly the same thing could be said of our good judgment as a town, but that is no reason to dispose of either the tree or our good judgment now.

So what if there is a too-big tree in a too-small space all crowded up against the river in a jumble? Isn’t that the whole story of Sandy Hook in a nutshell? We say keep the tree.