Boston Christmas Tree

Every Christmas since 1971, Nova Scotia has donated a large Christmas tree to the City of Boston in thanks and remembrance for the help the Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee provided immediately after the Halifax Explosion. The tree is Boston's official Christmas tree and is lit in the Boston Common throughout the holiday season. Knowing its symbolic importance to both cities, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources has specific guidelines for selecting the tree. It must be an attractive balsam fir, white spruce or red spruce, 12 to 16 meters (40 to 50 feet) tall, healthy with good color, medium to heavy density, uniform and symmetrical and easy to access.cite journal | author=Hana Janjigian Heald| title=Nova Scotia's Christmas Tree gift to Boston has a Dedham connection| journal=The Dedham Times| date=December 15, 2006| volume=14| issue=51| pages=3–3]

For the Christmas tree extension specialist the "tree can be elusive, the demands excessive, and the job requires remembering the locations of the best specimens in the province and persuading the people who own them to give them up for a pittance." Most donors are "honored to give up their trees... [and] most will gladly watch their towering trees fall" since everyone knows the reason it is being sent to Boston. Nova Scotian "children study [the explosion] in school and they know Boston was one of the first responders, and really a lifesaver." The trees "don't often come from tree farms, but from open land where they can grow tall and full." It is so important to the people of Nova Scotia that "people have cried over it, argued about it, even penned song lyrics in its honor."cite journal | author=Keith O'Brien| title=Oh! Christmas tree| journal=The Boston Globe| date=November 26, 2006| url=http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/11/26/oh_christmas_tree/]

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