Iconic Purcellville Christmas Tree Shines One Last Time

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Hat tip, WTOP, which ran the story all night long. I had insomnia.

Former Purcellville Mayor Eric Zimmerman’s nearly 100-foot Evergreen tree towers above and illuminates traffic on West Main Street. [Patrick Szabo/Loudoun Now]

Iconic Purcellville Christmas Tree Shines One Last Time

2018-12-24 LoudounNow

This could be the last year for Purcellville residents to admire one of the town’s most iconic Christmas sights.

The nearly 100-foot-tall evergreen tree in former mayor Eric Zimmerman’s front yard on Main Street has been a literal light of hope during the Christmas season for the past three decades. Since he bought the then-6-foot-tall tree in 1984, Zimmerman has decorated it with initially hundreds, now thousands of lights at the start of the Advent season and left them up until mid-January for residents and passersby to enjoy. Now towering over power lines and cars as they make their way through downtown Purcellville, a blight has struck the tree. “Chances are it’s going to ultimately die,” Zimmerman said.

This may be the last few weeks residents ever get to see the 34-year-old tree lit up in all its glory, seeing that an arborist gave Zimmerman the official word that its time left standing is limited. Zimmerman said that he may need to cut it down before a gust of wind does the job with disastrous effects. “It’s going to be sad when it comes down,” he said.

Leading up to this point, however, Zimmerman has been affectionately known by his neighbors as the “Clark Griswold of West Main Street,” taking every measure he could in the past 30 years to wrap lights around the tree.
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