Thank God. Or Netflix. Or both, because much to the relief of everyone of Italians everywhere, Romans have responded positively to the city’s Christmas tree, after a disaster of near biblical proportions last year.
Rarely had expectations for a tree been so high.
For weeks, Romans breathlessly awaited the presentation of the Italian capital’s official Christmas tree, a year after the resounding social media debacle that felled last year’s fir.
That tree, a Norway spruce that immediately lost its needles, had been mercilessly, and humorously, derided throughout the holiday season.
Mayor Virginia Raggi, no stranger to controversy, was swept up in the scathing social media maelstrom.
The 2017 Christmas tree in the Piazza Venezia in Rome created weeks of social media ridicule.
No sooner had workers hoisted a 72-foot tall Norway spruce in Rome’s central Piazza Venezia the mocking began.
The tree was quickly nicknamed Spelacchio, or Mangy, because so many of its dead needles were dropping off, leaving the tree looking a bit bare.
Rome’s Christmas Tree, 2017.
Chatter spread quickly on social media where Romans traded jokes about the spruce and criticized its sad appearance.
Insults quickly turned to intrigue as the Italian media plumbed the tree’s costs, questioned how it had been transported to the city and analyzed its state of health.
Some likened the scruffy tree to a toilet brush. Others unfavorably compared the sparse spruce to its crosstown counterpart in St. Peter’s Square, a lushly-leafed fir donated by Poland to the Vatican that was nicknamed “Rigoglio,” or luxuriant.
For many critics of Rome’s mayor, the mangy tree was a symbol of everything wrong with the capital, where garbage goes uncollected, potholes transform many streets into slalom courses and buses occasionally burst into flames.
The tree certainly didn’t help the historic cities confidence.
This year, Romans put their faith in Netflix, which contributed more than $428,376 as the tree’s sponsor.
It, too, had some controversy.
Everyone held their breath after the larger branches of the 75-foot tree were detached, and reaffixed upon arrival in Rome.
The Rome daily newspaper Il Messaggero wrote in a front-page article that the tree had been “disassembled and reassembled like a piece of Ikea furniture,” leading some Romans to call the tree #Spezzacchio, a play on the Italian verb “to break.”
Others unkindly compared the tree, whose trunk is striped with metal strips, to Frankenstein.
But when the tree was trimmed with 60,000 lights and 500 silver and red spherical ornaments — some marked by the streaming service’s trademark N — it looked just fine.
The city even built a platform for selfies.
And last night, after months of anticipation, the tree lights were switched on once again by Raggi, this time to the cheers from the crowd.
The 2018 Christmas tree in the Piazza Venezia in Rome is a hit.
Writing an editorial in the broadsheet Il Foglio, Nicola Imberti said the tree’s secret was that unlike last year, when the Christmas tree was an in-house operation, which cost less than €50,000, City Hall had called for outside help.
A private company like Netflix, he wrote, understood “the propaganda value that can come from such an investment.”
His suggestion, given Rome’s sorry state: “Why not give the government of the city over to Netflix.”
Maybe that’s not a bad idea.
Netflix & Rome.
You can check out the tree anytime, and from anywhere in the world, on Rome’s webcam.
Il bello della diretta sono io.https://t.co/6hT7IbaIX3
— Spelacchio (@spelacchio) December 5, 2018