Like a symphony that each orchestra plays a little bit differently, the installation of the Pennsylvania Capitol’s Christmas tree is never exactly the same every year.

Some parts of the process will go right; others not so much. Each effort to haul a 20-foot-plus tree into the Capitol Rotunda and get it upright is an exercise in improvisation by the dozens of state maintenance and repair workers who show up to complete the task. It’s been an annual event for decades.

This year’s conifer is a 25-foot Douglas Fir from Crystal Spring Tree Farm in Carbon County. Like every tree, it appeared too impossibly large to squeeze through the front entrance, even after crews had dismounted the revolving door to create as wide an opening as possible.

But this year, dragging the tree into the Rotunda

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