Reading now embraces 'ugly' Christmas tree with 'Charlie Brown' comparison

After scrapping plans to get rid of a Christmas tree that was decried as "ugly," officials in Reading, Pa., will instead embrace the comparisons its conifer has drawn to the plot of "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

The tree will be decorated with a single red ornamental bulb "in honor of the famous Charlie Brown Christmas tree," the city said in a news release.

The Reading administration and city council are also planning a series of volunteer events "that will highlight the season of giving and pay homage to the Charlie Brown Christmas tree and everything it stands for," the release states.

The spindly 50-foot spruce was taken from a city park to serve as a last-minute stand-in after plans to procure the city's official holiday tree from a farm fell through.

Topped with a lighted pretzel and erected last week in downtown Reading's Penn Square, it quickly became an object of ridicule, with residents decrying it as "pathetic" and calling for its removal.

"Honestly, they might as well put nothing out here," one man told WFMZ-TV.

Word of the saga quickly spread online, and Reading's City Hall was flooded with phone calls from around the country, officials said in a news release.

About half of those callers urged the city to keep the so-called "ugly" tree, and the administrationagreed to let it stand, according to the release.

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Reading now embraces 'ugly' Christmas tree with 'Charlie Brown' comparison