Community Connection ~ December 21, 2015: Christmas Around the World - Arizona!
The Advent season is well underway, but we have had so many fabulous All About Me Bags to share that we haven’t even begun our annual trip around the world to explore Christmas traditions from different places. As such, we are keeping it close to home this week and are traveling just down the road to Chandler, Arizona, home of the Tumbleweed Tree!
The Tumbleweed Tree is both just what you’d expect and also much more impressive than that - a Christmas tree composed of tumbleweeds which, in its final form, is beautiful, bright, and BIG. As the story goes, the first Tumbleweed Tree was made in 1957, on the heels of a fire that destroyed all of Chandler’s Christmas decorations. “Town Decorator” Earle Barnum conceived of the tree itself, which was accompanied by cotton boll wreaths hung on all of the town’s light poles (the poles were also new, and were not sturdy enough to accommodate anything heavier). The tree quickly became the star of the show, and today attracts around 12,000 people to Chandler to see it in person!
Today the Tumbleweed Tree stands 33 feet tall and is 18 feet across at the base. It is composed of over 1,000 tumbleweeds, which are gathered by the team at the Chandler Parks Department and attached to a wire frame, then coated with 25 gallons of latex paint and 50 pounds of glitter. The tree is also covered in a generous coating of fire retardant, a must-have since 1969, when vandalism partially destroyed the tree. While the tree has burned down 7 times over the years, the fire retardant has reportedly protected it from a number of additional attempts to destroy it.
If you’d like to learn more about the lore surrounding the Tumbleweed Tree, check out the references on its Wikipedia page - there are a dozen really interesting articles linked there. If your family would like to visit the tree, visit the City of Chandler’s website. This year’s tree lighting already happened, but the tree is still up, of course!
Aside from appreciating its beauty, we also invite you to consider how to incorporate the spirit of the tree into your own traditions. The Tumbleweed Tree is neither the largest nor the fanciest holiday decoration, but it is created collaboratively and deeply rooted in a sense of place - it is quintessentially Arizonan. How can you reflect those things in your family’s Christmas celebrations? If you have any beautiful, big, bright, BIG ideas, share them with us on Facebook or Instagram!