Middle Georgia’s ‘tallest,’ most visible Christmas tree is all but invisible by day
The most visible Christmas tree in Middle Georgia is all but invisible by day.
But at night, the tree of lights that spears Macon’s skyline from atop the 12-story BB&T building at Second and Walnut streets can be seen for miles.
It is a holiday beacon high above the banks of the Ocmulgee.
Travelers passing through on Interstate 16 can hardly miss it.
Locals can see it across vast stretches of the city’s east side and from neighborhoods to the immediate south and west.
By day, the tree — which is more a conic array of steel cables strung with lights — is at best a skeletal mirage of distant wires.
Then at sundown, the rooftop symbol becomes a beaming holiday mainstay.
James Fennel, the building’s operating engineer, has for more than 10 years had a hand in setting up the tree.
He said the tradition likely began sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, possibly around the time the building was known as the Macon Federal tower.
There would be an evening gathering on nearby Coleman Hill and someone at the building would throw a switch and light the tree.
The center of the tree is a 50-foot-tall flagpole that for most of the year is home to a 12-by-18-foot American flag.
But in the days before Thanksgiving, the flag comes down and 14 steel cables are run from its tip to points below, forming the tree’s framework.
Wires of lights are then run up the cables.
“We try to use as many colors as we can. ... We don’t try to do any pattern,” Fennel, 66, said.
He said it isn’t easy rigging the tree.
“But just thinking about how it affects people. It lets everybody know it’s the time of the season,” Fennel said. “I know that kids see it and it’s like, ‘Here comes Santa Claus.’”
Fennel figures one of the best vantage points to see the tree is along U.S. 80 coming into town just west of Mogul Road.
“If you’re coming in from that direction,” he said, “it’s really awesome.”