Rockefeller Tree

Tis now the season. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was hoisted upright and anchored into place above the skating rink Thursday morning, its stately boughs settling into graceful arcs as several hundred people watched, enchanted. Liz Scarnati, of Westchester, who works for the Rockefeller Center-based company Philips Electronic, said the event was exciting. She says it marks the beginning of Christmas in New York. The tree, lying on a flatbed truck, was brought to Rockefeller Center in the predawn hours from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Around 10:30 Thursday morning a tall crane slowly pulled it up, then lowered it into a big box next to the statue of Prometheus that overlooks the skating rink. Babs Wheelden, a 27-year-old tourist from Maine, where they know something about evergreens, surveyed the 73-foot-tall spruce and said: "It's nice to have a big tree in a city with so much concrete." The tree, which comes from the backyard of Ethel and Adolph Szitar in suburban Cleveland, will be decorated with 25-thousand lights over the next three weeks. The tree-lighting will be held December 2nd.