NEW YORK — A beloved Christmas tree tradition is returning to Manhattan for the holiday season next week. No, it’s not the towering spruce at Rockefeller Center, which is lit in early December.

The comparatively smaller Origami Holiday Tree, which has delighted crowds for decades at the American Museum of Natural History, opens to the public on Monday. The colorful, richly decorated, 13-foot tree is adorned with thousands of hand-folded paper ornaments created by origami artists from around the world.

This year’s tree is inspired by the museum’s new exhibition, “Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs,” which chronicles how an asteroid crash some 66 million years ago reshaped life on Earth.

Talo Kawasaki, the tree’s co-designer, said the tree’s theme is “New Beginnings,” in reference to

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