PALMER TOWNSHIP, Pa. — A tree from the grounds of Bethel Memorial Baptist Church at 715 Chestnut Lane will be Bethlehem’s city Christmas tree this year, with a rigging crew due about 7 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, to cut it down.
The church’s trustees voted to donate the spruce after the city asked for it, said Rod Harrison, the board’s vice chair, who oversees the church’s facility and grounds. It will be the city’s main Christmas display outside City Hall by the library, he said, where the city puts up its tree each year at Payrow Plaza.
The public is welcome to watch the cutting, Harrison said: the city encourages people to come see it. He said the cut should take the crew an hour to an hour and a half. Signs warning of the closure of Maple Lane will go up Monday, Nov. 2, and nothing is planned Tuesday, Election Day. The street will physically close Wednesday morning for the work.
The tree will be lit at the city’s annual tree-lighting ceremony Friday, Nov. 27, at Payrow Plaza, according to the Citizens’ Christmas City Committee, which organizes it. Gates open at 4 p.m. and the prelude starts at 4:30 p.m.
Greg Cryder, chief of the city’s Electrical Bureau, was one of two city officials who visited the church the following week, Harrison said, after the city emailed about a month ago to ask whether the church would donate a tree. Several large evergreens stand in the church’s parking lot.
The chosen tree is the tallest of three evergreens on the Maple Lane side of the lot, Harrison said. He did not give its height. The city’s trees were 43 feet last year and 45 feet in 2024 and 2023, according to Lehigh Valley Public Media’s reporting.
The church has invited a homeschool group and a youth group that meet there to watch the cutting, and plans to leave about 50 door hangers asking neighbors to come. Coffee, doughnuts and cider will be served.
Finding the tree is an annual job for Cryder. Last year he knocked on the door of David and Jessica Simoes in Bethlehem Township to ask for their 43-foot spruce, Jessica Simoes told Lehigh Valley Public Media.
The ceremony dates to 1964, according to The Morning Call. The tree itself has not always been a single yard tree: in 1971, the paper reported, the city’s 60-foot tree on the Hill-to-Hill Bridge was assembled from some 120 spruce.
