This southern Minnesota city turns its 40-foot Christmas tree upside down

The 40-foot-tall upside-down evergreen, suspended by crane, may look like an accident.

But for the second year in a row, the topsy-turvy Christmas tree this winter will be the centerpiece of festivities in New Ulm, a southern Minnesota town known for its German heritage and for taking the holidays seriously.

“It’s a bold statement hanging a tree upside down,” said Sarah Warmka, president of the New Ulm Area Chamber of Commerce, acknowledging some people don’t like change.

“Ultimately, it’s fantastic, it’s great exposure for our community, it’s something unique and fun to see,” she said.

The tree will hang tall not far from another German icon, New Ulm’s Hermann Monument.

Warmka said she’s aware of commenters, both local and online, wondering if the tree-based Christmas tradition is pagan. She says the city traces the tradition to early Christian history in Germany. The city dates the origin of the upside-down tree to the eighth century, when an English Benedictine is said to have hung a fir tree down side up to help shift pagans away from oak worship. Then folks started suspending trees from their ceilings to save space and show off ornaments, it said.

New Ulm tends to go all out for civic parties such as Oktoberfest and Christmas. The city even dumped 1,300 tons of fine-grained sand onto a central street for volleyball parties over the past few summers.

Residents and businesses in New Ulm have had upside-down Christmas trees over the years, Warmka said, although not to the scale of the past two years.

Local families have donated the trees the past two years, and donors cover the costs to cut down the trees and hang them, Warmka said.

Visitors to New Ulm, about 90 miles southwest of the Twin Cities, can walk through a park filled with typical-sized Christmas evergreens on their way to see the upside-down, giant tree.

Near the park, New Ulm will host its first Weihnachts Markt, a German-inspired holiday market, from noon to 5 p.m. The event will include vendors, food trucks, fire pits and a s’more station.

Warmka says there’s a secret hidden in the upside-down tree: a German pickle ornament. The first 30 children who find the pickle ornament can get a prize from the Chamber of Commerce building, she said.