Who said that a Christmas tree has to be a real tree?
That is what Kyiv authorities must have thought when deciding to install a dark green cone on Maydan Nezalezhnosti, the traditional location for the main holiday piece.
A minimalist-looking construction provoked an explosive reaction and inspired Ukrainians to spoof it in many ways. Social networks become overloaded with montages depicting the tree as a clown’s hood, a spaceship or a teepee.
In previous years, Ukraine’s main Christmas tree was natural. It used to take more than 400 small pine trees to construct one big tree. This year, the Kyiv administration took the risky step of ordering a synthetic tree.
The 40-meter construction consists of plastic pine tree branches on a steel framework and has a shape of a perfect cone. Its weight is about 50 tons.
After Kyivans saw it ready and decorated on Dec. 13, a huge wave of criticism and jokes prompted the city authorities to alter the decoration style. The tree was officially unveiled on Dec. 19 at a ceremony headed by President Viktor Yanukovych.
Meanwhile the weird Christmas tree came alive on Internet, starting its own Facebook page, a blog in LiveJournal and two Twitter accounts, updated by the “tree” itself. “I’m pretty bored. There’s no one here. Hope somebody will cause a traffic jam at Khreshchatyk and Institutska corner,” it tweeted several hours after the official opening.
The tree was immediately named Yolka, Russian for fir tree, after Yanukovych’s memorable mistake last year when he forgot the Ukrainian word for fir tree (yalynka) and used the Russian one instead.
Somehow Yanukovych ended up as the main target of jokes and montages starring the Christmas tree. Several pictures portray him wearing the lighted Christmas tree as a hat. Others show Yolka as a spaceship or a military rocket. A huge ice cream cone turned upside down is another incarnation of Yolka on the web.
The synthetic Christmas tree is also the most expensive one ever, costing Hr 2 million. The Kyiv city administration claims that only Hr 40,000 comes from the city budget, but won’t name the sponsors.
But the advantages to an artificial tree are that it is reusable.
Olexander Popov, the Kyiv city state administration’s head, defended the tree – saying its cone shape is required by safety measures.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected]
