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The Associated Press The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree stands lit in front of the General Electric building in New York's Rockefeller Plaza, during the annual tree lighting ceremony. The tree is usually six storeys tall and covered with 30,000 lights. Joe Vericker / Photo Bureau, Inc. Cathy Donaldson meets actor Martin Sheen before he and others from the cast of TV's The West Wing flick the switch to illuminate this year's Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree. Cathy Krawchuk-Donaldson A Santa spotted near skyscrapers in Midtown Manhattan poses in front of a massive display of holiday ornaments.

By Cathy Krawchuk-Donaldson

SINCE I was a child, I've dreamt about Christmas in New York City, all because of a little book.

On my sixth Christmas, my grandmother gave me a copy of The Most Beautiful Tree in the World, the story of a family who allowed an enormous spruce tree to be cut down outside their country home and hauled away to New York City. There it was used as the featured attraction at the city's annual Christmas tree lighting extravaganza in Rockefeller Centre.

The book explained that a helicopter crew had scouted the countryside by air before finding that one special tree.

I was awed by the story and, as a youngster growing up in Cape Breton, impressed with the fact that more than a million people would visit the tree once it was relocated. (I was equally amazed to learn that millions more would see it on television.)

Fast forward 31 years.

It's late November 2003 and I've just arranged to get a press pass for this year's tree lighting event in the Big Apple.

I'm giddy with excitement. I have never been to New York City and am thrilled with that prospect alone, but doubly enthused knowing that I would get to see the famous tree lighting first hand.

By now, I'd learned a great deal about the Christmas tree tradition at Rockefeller Centre.

Sure enough, there is a Christmas tree team that takes to the skies each year over the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in search of the perfect tree to become the holiday showpiece in America's most-populated city.

I'd also learned that the U.S. has celebrated Christmas around the Rockefeller Centre tree since 1931, when the centre was still a muddy construction site. It was then the Great Depression, and workmen placed their tree amidst the construction, proud to see it tower over the site that gave them jobs.

The first formal Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree lighting ceremony took place in 1933, when a tree covered with 700 lights was placed in front of the eight-month-old RCA Building. In 1936, the lighting ceremony changed somewhat to include a skating pageant on the newly-opened Rockefeller Plaza Outdoor Ice-Skating Pond.

In 1951, the tree lighting ceremony was first televised. By 1964, it had become an annual television special, broadcast each Christmas with a celebrity host.

Having beefed up my knowledge of tree history, I was ready to begin my adventure to this year's lighting.

My husband and I arrived in New York City the afternoon of the big event.

Our flight to LaGuardia Airport took us over several prominent city landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and the gap in the skyline where the World Trade Centre's twin towers once stood.

Minutes later, our plane landed and we sped by taxi to our midtown Manhattan hotel, passing Central Park and bordering upscale residences.

From the cab, we zipped to our rooms, flung open our suitcases and bundled up in layers for the tree lighting that night.

Armed with an e-mail printout indicating the location of the media centre where I was to pick up my press pass, I followed my husband (who had been to New York before) to Rockefeller Centre. Our pace quickened as I realized the centre closed in 10 minutes.

With the help of nice cop, we made it behind the metal barricades that had been placed in a wide radius around Rockefeller Centre to the foreign media pen.

I never really considered Canada that "foreign" to the U.S. before, but there we stood, huddled in a barricaded zone overlooking the skating surface at Rockefeller Centre, surrounded by several Japanese film crews and a gal from German Public Radio.

It was all a bit odd but I quickly absorbed myself in the view to my left.

This year's Christmas tree was spectacular. The 24-metre-tall, 12-metre-wide beast of greenery loomed over Rockefeller Centre, just above the ice surface. With the bulbs on its branches not yet lit, it still proved a majestic sight.

As my husband and I surveyed the massive evergreen and other nearby decorations, NBC television began broadcasting a live show from a staging area in the vicinity. Various artists, including Ashanti, Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, Harry Connick, Jr., Gloria Estefan and Enrique Iglesias, braved the cold to put their own spin on traditional Christmas carols.

We "foreign" types watched the stars on a massive screen perched aside the NBC building. The American media were apparently closer to the staging area, but I wasn't complaining. We had an incredible view of the tree and the skaters swirling on the ice beneath its branches.

As we took in the show, a media co-ordinator quietly approached me and asked, "You interested in interviewing Martin Sheen?" I immediately said, "Sure."

I had no idea what merit the interview would have for my story on the tree but I enjoyed Sheen as fictional Democratic President Josiah Bartlet in the TV show The West Wing.

Within minutes, a well-coiffed Sheen appeared, relaxed and ready to shoot the breeze. It turned out he and the West Wing cast had been invited to join New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other dignitaries in flipping the switch to illuminate the big tree at the end of the NBC broadcast.

When I told Sheen that I was from New Brunswick, he began reminiscing about visits to Eastern Canada to help Paul Watson, the Canadian who has campaigned against seal hunting since the 1970s.

I asked Sheen for his thoughts on Christmas in the city that never sleeps.

"New York becomes a great community at Christmas," said Sheen, who once lived in NYC and now calls Los Angeles home. "It's really the best time of year to be here."

Half an hour later, still a bit star struck, my husband and I checked our watches and noted that it was almost 9 p.m. Seconds later, the hosts of the NBC broadcast, Al Roker and Ann Curry, led the crowd of several hundred thousand in a countdown to the tree lighting.

Finally, the moment came - 30,000 lights blazed over the 50-year-old Norway spruce sending New Yorkers and visitors, myself included, into a cheering frenzy. It was truly magical and well worth our frigid three-hour wait.

Before I returned to our hotel room for the night, I'd hoped to speak with 79-year-old Frances Katkauskus of Manchester, Conn., owner of this year's tree. I didn't get a chance to meet her but managed to track her down by phone upon my return home.

I told Frances about my article and the book I'd read as a child. She said she was surprised the tree search team had picked her spruce, one of several she and her late husband, Adolph, planted in the yard of their home in 1953.

"They came along and said they'd like to measure it," she said. "The tree was just growing down there, on the lawn. I never looked at it as a Christmas tree."

More than 100 neighbours and friends gathered on Nov. 11 as the tree was cut down, which Frances said "only took about two minutes." But it took two days to bundle the sprawling branches and haul the tree by "a great, huge truck" to New London, Conn., where it was then transported by barge to Pier 84 in New York City.

Frances joined family and friends for the tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Centre and was thrilled to know the part her tree played in the event.

"I was astounded and overwhelmed," she said. "They really did a wonderful job with it."

Frances was also proud to say that a slice of the giant stump that remains on her lawn will be removed and given to the Manchester Historical Society. The Rockefeller Centre team will eventually replace her spruce with a red maple.

"There's a certain feeling of sadness but my husband would have wanted this to happen," she said. "This is something you're giving to the entire world."

I wished Frances a Merry Christmas and hung up, later reflecting on how the Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree lighting celebration has truly grown into a national tradition - perhaps an international one.

In fact, I'd love to return with my husband next year, maybe with our daughters. If not, there's no doubt we'll all be glued to the television for next year's ceremony.

Freelance writer Cathy Krawchuk-Donaldson lives in Moncton, N.B.