Is It True That There Will Not Be a Christmas Tree in Faneuil Hall This Year?
All I'm saying, is this better be the biggest batch of ever fake news that ever fake newsed.
According to the Only In Boston Facebook Page, there will be no Christmas Tree put up at Faneuil Hall this season.
There's nothing behind where they discovered this info or even a picture to support it other than a picture of Faneuil Hall in the day time where the tree usually stands. But you have to think they got this info from somewhere, right?
Well, it could also be that they confused some information that's starting to float around. Since I wanted to be an investigator/CSI when I was younger (before one of my cousins completely ruined my dreams of that, which is a story in and of itself), I like to fancy myself an amateur sleuth here and there, so I did some digging.
According to BostonCentral.com, which lists a lot of events going on in and around the city (especially around the holiday season), scheduled Christmas Tree Lightings for the trees in Boston Common and Copley Square have gone virtual, but the Faneuil Hall Christmas Tree Lighting is listed as cancelled (as is the "Blink! Holiday Lights" display, which also takes place in Faneuil Hall and basically lights the entire marketplace up.)
But here's the thing -- NOWHERE does it say that the actual tree being put up is cancelled, just the tree lighting event, which is usually a major event every single year (think of the Festival of Trees in Dover, for comparison).
Now, it could go hand-in-hand, but I dug around the official City of Boston website and couldn't find anything that says any info about it either way. And you'd think if they were going to cancel one of the biggest events in Boston of the Christmas season, they'd announce it.
But at the same time, you'd also think they'd have the date and time up there already since I feel like it usually happens during the first week in December. There was some confusion that a tree was on its way from Nova Scotia to Boston to be displayed in Faneuil Hall, but it seems like that's actually the tree for Boston Common.
So, maybe I would've made a terrible investigator/CSI, actually, since I'm no closer to an answer than at the start of this article. BUT, you have to think with now people talking about it and wondering if it's true or not, some sort of statement will be made soon about it.
What do you think? IF this is true and there will be no tree in Faneuil Hall this year, do you support it to keep the crowds from gathering around it, or do you think in the face of what's been a really rough year, the tree should still go up without the big lighting ceremony to try and at least bring SOME kind of positivity and spread SOME kind of Christmas cheer this season? Especially since there are already trees going up in Boston Common and Copley Square? (For the record, some of the commenters on the Only In Boston post seem to believe that the Faneuil Hall Marketplace itself pays for the tree through the businesses there, which have all taken a beating this year from the pandemic, with some even closing.)