Sao Paolo’s steel Christmas tree continues to grow and grow

SAO PAULO - Families around the world are busy decorating their Christmas trees with lights, tinsel, baubles and angels. That usually takes no longer than a couple of hours at most but in warm Sao Paolo in Brazil it takes a brigade of building workers almost four weeks to get the city’s official tree ready.

Of course, the tree would never fit into a living room and not even into a big house. The pride of Sao Paolo’s residents, the Paulistas, has a steel structure that is 75 metres high, weighs about 250 tonnes and has a diameter of 32 metres.

“Every year it grows by about five metres,” says Gil D’Ettore, the foreman in charge of the Christmas tree building site. The tree is surrounded by traffic on the six lane Avenida Pedro Alvares Cabral on the edge of Ibirapuera Park, Sao Paolo’s green lung. It was first erected in 2002 when it was “just” 40 metres high.

In temperatures well over 35 degrees Celsius, the construction workers use an elevator inside the steel structure to travel up and down. On the labyrinth of steel pipes they place fluorescent lights, decorative Santa Clauses and lots and lots of stars.

From above, the “branches” at the tree’s bottom appear to be extremely small. The tree has eight segments and five kilometres of tinsel in gold and green. At night a million light bulbs illuminate the Arvore de Natal as the tree is called.

D’Ettore is lathered in sweat even though he does not have to climb to the top of the tree as the other workers do. But in the small construction hut where the tree’s building plans cover the walls, temperatures are over 40 degrees. “This is the third time I’ve worked on the tree,” says the Brazilian with Italian forefathers.

The tree is always ready by the second day of Advent when its lights are turned on for the first time. The city’s 20 million inhabitants can then admire the lights from 7 p.m. to midnight every evening until Jan 6. At weekends the lights remain on for an extra hour.

“This is very nice work,” says Lukas, who has worked on many sites in Sao Paolo such as shopping centres and high rise buildings. But he says the Christmas tree is something special. “Everyone is very happy when they drive by and see the tree. It’s a good thing.”

Lukas’ small son is also proud of the tree because his papa built it all on his own, says the construction worker with a grin. But no one person could complete the tree as it takes up to 200 people working in shifts day and night to get the job done.

Next year the tree is due to grow by an extraordinary amount when it will be 90 metres high. By that stage the Paulistas will have caught up with their eternal rivals from Rio de Janeiro.

“The tree in Rio is growing at a slower pace,” says the chief of the Rio Christmas tree building site, Marco. This year the Rio tree is 85 metres high - 10 more than in Sao Paolo. It’s been the world record holder for years but this year Mexico City piped it to the post. The tree there was scheduled to be over 110 metres high.