Then to Zwolle: How the city was tricked with a Christmas tree by New York

Traditionally, there is a large Christmas tree on Zwolle’s Grote Markt every year. For decades, Zwolle residents have been surprised by, for example, a pine tree. But in the middle of the last century this was not yet evident and the inhabitants of Zwolle were even flavored with a non-existent New York Christmas tree.

Let’s go back to 1958. It has become an increasingly common practice in America to place Christmas trees on large city squares, wrote the Overijsselsche Provincial in Zwolsche Courant on December 23, 1958. Not yet in Zwolle.

Boom ‘borrowed’ from New York

But indeed a “richly lit Christmas tree” was also planted on Zwolle’s Grote Markt that year, the newspaper wrote the same day. There was a beautiful snapshot, showing how a large Christmas tree was placed right in front of the Grote Kerk. But those who read further discovered that the photo was fake. “There have been talks of a fake photo, where the tree was ‘borrowed’ from New York, where a 25m tall spruce was erected at Rockefeller Center,” the newspaper wrote. So no Christmas tree. Hope was pinned on next year: would there be a tree in the heart of Zwolle?

You guessed it: in 1959 the municipality of Zwolle placed a tree on the Grote Markt. “Although not 25 meters tall, but still a boy of a pine about eight meters. In the evening the tree was lit up. Tribute, city council”, wrote the same newspaper on December 19, 1959.

24m Finnish Christmas tree

Since then, the Christmas tree has become an indispensable part of the Grote Markt. In 1960, the city received a 24m tall Finnish Christmas tree, brought back from the Overijsselsch Dagblad in 1960. The Finnish ambassador was also present. The big tree weighed 1800 kilograms. “A tree that could have been cut down in the Veluwe, but oh the idea that it comes from Finland spice things up a bit,” wrote provincial newspaper Overijsselsche and Zwolsche.