Jim Bradshaw: South La. had world's record Christmas tree

Make your guess: Where was the largest decorated Christmas tree in the world in the 1950s?
Hint: It wasn’t in Paris, New York or Washington. D.C., at least according to "Ripley’s Believe It or Not." The celebrated collector of trivia gave the honor to a huge old oak tree at the end of the main street in the Jeff Davis Parish community of Lake Arthur.
The Jennings Daily News gave this account of the 1953 ceremony to light the tree.
“The tree on Lake Arthur’s Arthur Avenue was lighted [to open] this Christmas season in fitting ceremonies. … Subject of the get-together was a giant live oak which has been decorated with Yule lights and stars at the Christmas season annually. … It was the subject of an item in Robert Ripley’s ‘Believe It Or Not’ feature several years ago. He called it ‘The largest Christmas tree in the world,’ and the title stuck.”
The decorations were the inspiration of the town’s Parent-Teacher Association, which, according to a brief news item in October 1950, “voted to sponsor a drive to have the big oak tree on the neutral ground lighted at Christmas.”
The volunteer fire department took up the challenge and used its ladders to string “myriads” of lights on the old oak. Other groups joined in the annual festivities, and a tradition was born — or actually reborn.
The old tree had been the center of attraction some years before.
When the lights were turned on in 1950, the News reported that the “gala event … will mark the first time the huge tree has been festooned with the multi-color Christmas lights in 15 years.”
I can’t find when it started, or why it stopped, but the lighting was apparently well established in 1934 (16 years earlier), when a newspaper article bore the headline, “Hundreds Drive to Lake Arthur to See Big Yule Tree.” It seems that Ripley had already made the tree famous by then.
“Hundreds of people from this entire section have driven down to Lake Arthur to see the big lighted live oak tree near the wharf entrance. The tree is said to be the biggest Christmas tree in the world. …The great live oak with leaves green every day of the year is probably 150 years old. It is located immediately on the north bank of Lake Arthur at the foot of Arthur avenue and is of mammoth proportions.”
In 1934, hundreds of colored lights  were “hung on the branches … in such a manner that they show to the best advantage” and a six-foot star was placed at the top of the tree.
The huge old tree succumbed to a hurricane in the early 2000s, but tree lighting continues each year in Lake Arthur, including another old oak described by one citizen as “not as big, but growing.”
The town officially opens this year’s celebration on December 9 with a parade, fireworks, and pretty lights — all of which continue the spirit and tradition of the tree that, whether or not it was really the biggest, came to be an enduring symbol of this season.
The Jennings newspaper said of the old oak in 1934, “The mission which this great tree fills is to impart Christmas cheer to all who look upon it. And the tree standing majestically with its years of life, its leaves still green in the dead of winter, is indeed a thing of beauty.”
The old tree is gone, but perhaps we need now more than ever to remember that mission and do our part to “impart Christmas cheer to all.”
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.