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Nation's Tallest Indoor Christmas Tree Takes Root In A Dallas Shopping Mall

The tallest indoor Christmas tree in the country has just gone up at the center of Galleria Dallas. More than a dozen engineers and so-called décor experts recently helped get the tree ready for its annual appearance. 

Every year the tree has to be reconstructed. You can't just whip a 95-foot-tall decorated tree out of a box. 

Workers gathered around a huge metal skeleton that stood on the ice skating rink. It was unadorned, naked, ready for trimming.

"There's probably about 50 people here," Martha Hinojosa says. "We call them Santa's helpers."

Engineers are climbing the structure like Spiderman, arranging the wiring to connect 450,000 LED lights.

Dozens of “Santa’s helpers” are removing small branches from big cardboard boxes. The 1,700 branches, which are 4 feet long, have been folded up and stored for 10 months.

They need to be fluffed.

Keith Smith of Dallas is one of the workers. 

“I come every year up here to this extravaganza," he says. He laughs. "We have a good time doing it."

Once it’s complete, the tree weighs in at five tons -- or about 10 cars -- and holds 10,000 colored ball ornaments.

Hinojosa says this Christmas tree gets more skaters around it than the one at Rockefeller Center in New York City.

After all, inside a mall, there’s no such thing as bad weather. 

Video: Watch the 2012 tree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zutmVgrZqms

Video: Watch the 2013 tree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APL0zMtizh4

Lauren Silverman was the Health, Science & Technology reporter/blogger at KERA News. She was also the primary backup host for KERA’s Think and the statewide newsmagazine  Texas Standard. In 2016, Lauren was recognized as Texas Health Journalist of the Year by the Texas Medical Association. She was part of the Peabody Award-winning team that covered Ebola for NPR in 2014. She also hosted "Surviving Ebola," a special that won Best Long Documentary honors from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. (PRNDI). And she's won a number of regional awards, including an honorable mention for Edward R. Murrow award (for her project “The Broken Hip”), as well as the Texas Veterans Commission’s Excellence in Media Awards in the radio category.