Origami tree returns to Manhattan’s American Museum of Natural History for the holidays

A beloved Christmas tree tradition is returning to Manhattan for the holiday season next week. No, it’s not the towering spruce at Rockefeller Center, which is lit in early December.

The comparatively smaller Origami Holiday Tree that’s delighted crowds for decades at the American Museum of Natural History opens to the public on November 24. The colorful, richly decorated 13-foot tree is adorned with thousands of hand-folded paper ornaments created by origami artists from around the world.

This year’s tree is inspired by the museum’s new exhibition, Impact: The End of the Age of Dinosaurs, which chronicles how an asteroid crash some 66 million years ago reshaped life on Earth.

Codesigner Talo Kawasaki said the tree’s theme is “New Beginnings,” in reference to the new world that followed the mass extinction.

Located off the museum’s Central Park West entrance, the artificial tree is topped with a golden, flaming asteroid.

Its branches and limbs are pa