The most famous Christmas tree in the world, at the Rockefeller Center in New York, was created by an Italian. Its story of gratitude, resilience and pride is rooted in the industrious dignity of Cesidio Perruzza.
He was an emigrant from Abruzzo, born in 1884 in San Donato Val di Comino, who, during the Great Depression, created the first Christmas tree with a group of Italian workers in the square, a message of hope and gratitude. Cesidio Perruzza emigrated to the United States in search of a better future in 1901, when he was only seventeen years old. He specialized in the use of explosives for construction, earning the nickname “Joe Blaster”.
In 1931, Cesidio and his Italian colleagues were working on the construction of the RCA Building skyscraper, now part of the Rockefeller Center. He had the idea of decorating a fir tree with recycled materials to celebrate the work and life of Italian emigrants. With the help of over sixty Italian workers, many of whom from San Donato Val di Comino, he created the first Christmas tree in New York. The decorations were a mix of traditional garlands and symbolic objects, such as aluminium, obtained from detonators.
Photo of the Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center in New York in 1931 with a dedication by Mario Cuomo.
“New York thanks the people of San Donato Val di Comino”
These are the words that Mario Cuomo, the former Governor of the State of New York and son of Italian emigrants, wrote on the back of a photo dated December 24, 1931, before donating it to the Perruzza family. The photo, which brought this story to light in 1999, shows Italian workers at the Rockefeller Center construction site queuing for their weekly pay, with the first decorated Christmas tree in the background.
Gerardina receives the photo from 21.12.1931 of the Christmas Tree at the Rockefeller Center in New York with a dedication from Mario Cuomo in 1999.
The photo immortalizes Cesidio Perruzza and his brother Loreto, Antonio Ventura from San Donato Val di Comino, some emigrants from Irpinia and the Sicilian Antonio Salimbene, a leading figure in the defence of the Italian- American labourers’ rights. The tree was a gesture of gratitude towards Rockefeller, their employer, and a symbol of unity and resilience for a community of emigrants who, far from their homeland, preserved their pride and hopes.
The story of Cesidio Perruzza is narrated in the videoclip “1931: brillano le luci a Manhattan”, a project born from the collaboration between Paolo Masini, President of the “Fondazione del Museo Nazionale dell’Emigrazione Italiana (MEI)”, and Luca Leone, coordinator of the “Museo del Novecento e della Shoah di San Donato Val di Comino”. The clip, narrated by Massimo Wertmüller on a text by Maria Grazia Lancellotti, portrays unpublished images illustrating this extraordinary story. Also available on the MEI social media channels, it will be screened from December 22, 2024 to January 6, 2025 at the “Museo Nazionale dell’Emigrazione Italiana di Genova” and at the “Museo del Novecento e della Shoah di San Donato Val di Comino”.