It’s the most wonderful time of the year…unless you’re in Rome.
Christmas decorations are a wonderful distraction from the awful awfulness that has been the year 2017. The bright lights, shiny tinsel, and beautiful trees are almost (almost) enough to distract you from the things that typically make you want to curl up into a ball and cry all day.
But in one particular plaza in Rome, the Christmas spirit is not alive and well. In fact, it’s pretty dead.
A public Christmas tree needs big and bold. Something that will cause people to stop in their tracks and be overwhelmed with awe at its sheer majesty.
Take the tree at Rockefeller Center, for instance. Every year, the tree is seriously amazing. (And after Christmas, the tree is milled into lumber to build Habitat for Humanity homes — it’s beautiful and useful!)
See? It’s a little sparse, too. Maybe it’s just as bad as the one in Italy.
Let’s take another look…
Woof.
No, yeah, this one is definitely way, way worse. The citizens of Rome have started calling the poor tree “Spelacchio,” which roughly translates to “Mangy.”
Yeah. That tracks.
It’s true. Poor Spelacchio maybe just needs a little love.
And a lot of water.
And maybe some superglue.
At least we can say this about the tree: He tried.
That’s gotta count for something, right?