LaLa Times -- Everything Absurd Under the Sun!

Don't tell Sabrina LaPaluca that Christmas lasts only one day a year. In fact, she claims it was the spirit of Christmas, already past, that compelled her to scale a landmark "tree" and demand that it not be taken down — at least not yet.

SANTA MONICA, Ca. – As the ball was dropping in Times Square, New York City, LaPaluca ascended the 40 foot tall shopping cart structure shaped like a Christmas tree. This symbolic sculpture is an annual tradition in Santa Monica's Edgemar Plaza. Typically it is taken down the first week of January.

BULLISH ON CHRISTMAS: The so-called "Christmas Treesitter" peers down at shoppers below.

LaPaluca is an activist associated with the quasi-Christian, eco-military group known as Californians for a Greater Christmas. Their web site states that they're "not so much green-affiliated as green-and-red affiliated." Their emblem depicts the American flag as background to a ribboned package with a cross on the front, lying beneath an evergreen tree.

"I just love that old tree," LaPaluca said via cell phone as she nestled into her shopping cart perch high up the tree. "They want to take it down, but we're not going to let them. We have conditions that we want met. Every year, no sooner do we warm up to Christmas than all the decorations start coming down. It's just not right. For all we know this could be the last year they put this thing up. We want an ordinance that says Christmas decorations should stay up until May 1st. If they don't accept, then they'll just have to come up here and cut me out. But I'm chained in with pipes and locks and all sorts of crap, so they'd better not even try."

"They want to take it down, but we're not going to let them. We have conditions that we want met. Every year, no sooner do we warm up to Christmas than all the decorations start coming down. It's just not right."

— Sabrina LaPaluca, Tree-sitter

The spokesperson for Californians for a Greater Christmas, Denise Longsworth, emphasized that the tree takeover is not a copycat of John Quigley's tree-sitting episode with the Santa Clarita Valley oak that garnered national headlines.

"No," says Longsworth, "in fact, we thought of other options at first: a hostile takeover of the Santa Monica promenade, or maybe a toy store that's all decked out with holly and good cheer. But we decided that this tree would be a stronger and more specific symbol of what we're about. The Christmas season is getting shorter every year. We're ready to go all the way on this one — to the Supreme Court, if need be! Sabrina is prepared to starve to death if necessary. I mean, she hasn't exactly said that, per se, but I know her… and I know what she's capable of… and this is it."

Though police cordoned off the area around the tree, supporters and Christmas well-wishers tossed fruitcakes, gingerbread cookies, and figgy pudding to LaPaluca from the roofs of adjacent buildings. One supporter went so far as to use a bow-and-arrow to shoot a string of popcorn to Lapaluca. In a run-in with the police, another person was arrested when an officer slipped on a bundt cake and had to be taken to the hospital.

Roeckenstammer, Inc., the company that owns the plaza, says it wants the group to put a quick stop to the event and for LaPaluca to descend immediately and unequivocally.

"They're being totally unreasonable," says Jens Roeckenstammer, the company president, "Maybe we'd consider keeping things up halfway through January… but May 1st?! Come on. Personally, I don't know if I could even stand looking at that tree for so long. We've got to do whatever's necessary, prudent and safe, to get her down."

The company has appealed to the Santa Monica city council to serve LaPaluca with the necessary legal papers to get her down. But the city's left-leaning council is somewhat sympathetic to the group's plight.

"We believe that we understand this group's pain," stated a written statement drawn up by the city council, "and we do not condone the abbreviation of Christmas either. However, it is this council's decision that your organization must comply with this request or face police action."

But the organization's steadily growing followers closed ranks as soon as word of the letter got out. News crews are staked out in the plaza, cameras poised and aimed at LaPaluca in case the police or the fire department try to remove her.
LaPaluca says she isn't worried. "Christ was up on the cross for days before he ascended; I can wait them out for weeks before I descend."