From our archives: How the National Enquirer’s big Christmas tree became a Lantana tradition

Editor's note: This story is from the Post archives as a previous Post Time column by Eliot Kleinberg.

While South Florida can’t match the rest of the country in snow, it once offered up an exclusive Christmas combo: the world’s most outrageous tabloid and the “World’s Largest Decorated Christmas Tree.”

For nearly two decades, the National Enquirer’s tree rose above the railroad tracks and U.S. 1 outside the legendary newspaper’s Lantana offices.

The tree owes its inception to inadvertent — some might say divine — circumstances. When Enquirer icon Generoso Pope moved his newsroom from New Jersey to the warmer climes and small-town accoutrements of Lantana in 1971, he found himself, well, pining for northern Christmas traditions.

More holiday fun: Best restaurants for Christmas Eve, Christmas dining in Palm Beach County

So he ordered a 45-foot tree for his employees. Motorists on adjacent Dixie Highway noticed it and soon were jamming side roads and parking in swales so they could get out and gape at the big tree.

Like the Grinch’s heart, each year the crowds grew bigger, and the tree grew bigger, and soon the Spectacle of Lights, complete with up to 300,000 lights and a collection of animated exhibits and model trains, had become a phenomenon, drawing as many as a million people over the holiday season.

The tree reached 117 feet in 1979 and was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Pope would never disclose how much he spent on the massive display, saying only he did it “because it gives so much pleasure to so many people.”

When Pope died at 61 in October 1988, that marked the end of the big tree as well.

Just two months after his death, Pope’s widow, standing next to a 126-foot Douglas fir, threw the switch that powered 15,200 colored lights. The tree featured 1,200 colored balls, 250 red bows, 180 candy canes and snowflakes and was topped with a 6-foot lighted silver star.

But it already had been announced that the Enquirer was for sale.

The next year, with no tree on the horizon, Tom Kaufman, owner of the nearby Riggins Lobster & Steak House, stepped in, proposing to move the tree to his eatery. When he ran into resistance from Lantana officials, he set up the 144-foot tree on Dec. 1 at Miami’s Bayfront Park. Soon corporate backers fell through and the Save the Christmas Tree Foundation, $300,000 into debt, went bankrupt. The tree stood forlornly for 50 days, when it was unceremoniously chopped up.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Palm Beach Post archives: National Enquirer’s Christmas tree history