Anna Rawhiti-Connell reflects on the week that was.

This week I hosted The Spinoff’s Year In Review live event In Wellington. Everything went remarkably well, and you can attend the same (but maybe more refined) event in Auckland on December 11. The welcoming crowd in Wellington even wanted more of an opening bit I thought I’d designed to be deliberately awful and very short.

Hubris got the best of me, and I felt bold enough to slip in a line about it being legal to start playing Christmas music in mid-November. People booed. Only one person in the sold-out Hannah Playhouse agreed with me.

I love Christmas. I know a lot of people don’t, and have good reasons. I respect that but as someone who identifies as a hater, Christmas is when I get to shed the skin I mooch around in for most of the year and find joy by embracing seasonal traditions.

I also firmly believe there’s a bit of Christmas magic that belongs exclusively to children, and my husband and I haven’t been able to have kids. I used to think I was compensating for that in my embrace of traditions, both grand and very silly, but I now recognise it’s a core value, made manifest.

I think that in life, you get out what you put in, and that applies to your work, your relationships and your community. Participating in shared traditions is binding and offers moments of connection. At a time when hundreds of thousands of words have been spilled describing and defining a loneliness epidemic, and our sense of each other and the world is delivered secondhand via screens, connecting in real life, even fleetingly and over silly things, feels both crucial and under threat.

All of this is to say that when I heard about the Christmas tree being erected in downtown Auckland, my heart leapt.

That wasn’t how everyone reacted. Because it’s one of those things that cost money, “ratepayer” money at that, and it isn’t made of bitumen, it got “baulked at”, “criticised”, and Auckland Council was accused of “splashing the cash”.

Auckland Ratepayers’ Alliance spokesperson Sam Warren told the NZ Herald that the cost raised questions around spending priorities. “There’s no doubt the tree will look stunning – it should, given its incredibly high price tag,” Warren said.

“But considering the state of the books, and how everyone else has had to tighten their belts, it’s hard not to wonder if this is a ‘nice to have’ and not a necessity.”

The tree is going to cost $1.2m. No one clicks on a headline that says, “The council contribution is $400,000, which comes from the city centre targeted rate, a rate collected from residents and businesses in the central city, and not the wider ratepayer base”. “High price tags” for “nice to haves” are good for clicks, so that’s the angle that led.

As deputy mayor Desley Simpson articulated in a LinkedIn post, the city centre targeted rate take can only be spent on things in the central city. Heart of the City’s Viv Beck explained to RNZ that the cost was split three ways and that there is benefit for the many businesses who’ve had a tough year in attracting more people into the city during the biggest trading month of the year. Beck also pointed out that the tree is made of stainless steel and that it will be durable. Hopefully, the tree will have a long life ahead of it.

Even if it didn’t have a bunch of foot traffic KPIs (probably) attached to it to justify its brazen attempt to bring spirit and joy to the city, and was just a “nice to have” that might make people feel a wee bit more connected to each other, I’d still support the tree.

Auckland constantly talks about itself as an international city. It wants to play on the same stage as other big international cities. You know what a lot of big international cities have? A honking great Christmas tree in the middle of town just for looking at and gathering around. I’ve been lucky to have two Christmases in New York, and the streets heave on Christmas Eve as thousands go to look at the tree at the Rockefeller Centre and the lights along Fifth Ave.  

Hear me out, but some cities understand that big and spectacular things play a role in making a city feel big and spectacular. Big and spectacular things often beget more big and spectacular things, and weirdly they’re often quite good for making cities richer in more ways than one.

Bring on the tree lighting ceremony on November 23. Desley Simpson says the Auckland Council choir will be there (along with Anika Moa and Tami Nielson), and I reckon seeing that is not a “nice to have” but an absolute necessity. 

It’s been a grim and tough year for so many people. A honking great civic Christmas tree isn’t going to magic that away, but maybe traditions, both grand and very silly, have a role to play in manifesting the international city we want Auckland to be.

It turns out that there’s something I love even more than Christmas, and that’s the city centre targeted rate being spent on activating the central city.

This week on Behind the Story

Wellington editor Joel MacManus joins editor Madeleine Chapman to talk about his latest Cover Story, Inside the urgent race to solve homelessness in Aotearoa, and his time speaking to those on the frontline in the fight to solve homelessness once and for all.

Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.