The opportunity to play the sad Christmas tree music from Charlie Brown in the context of an actual sad, ugly Christmas tree story doesn’t come around too often, but today is that day: The town of Reading, PA is ditching a tree deemed too pathetic and unseemly for the public eye in favor of a newer, more pleasing to the eye specimen.

The scrawny 50-foot spruce soured holiday feelings, reports WFMZ.com with residents complaining that the tree just looks pitiful.

“I know Reading is not doing too great,” one man who works near the tree told the news station. “But facing this tree up here is making it even worse.”

“If I were a squirrel looking for a home for the winter, I wouldn’t even go in that tree,” said another.

To revive the town’s holiday jollity, the city council president is leading a group to raise funds for a two new, prettier trees and the money to decorate them.

Apparently the current tree was a last-minute replacement from a city park — the city was supposed to get a tree from a farm but the owner wouldn’t let workers drive on wet ground when it came time to fetch it.

The council president says the group has already raised $1,000 in donations for the new, un-sad trees, and he’ll go shopping for them this weekend.

“So hopefully we’ll be able to have a beautiful Penn Street appropriate tree here by Monday night,” he said.

It’s not all sad music for the ugly tree, however, as WFMZ said it received an email from a local auto dealership, expressing interested in adopting it, in true Charlie Brown fashion.

On that note, take it away, Charlie:

City’s “ugly” Christmas tree causes controversy [WFMZ.com]

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