From the moment it is felled, the giant Norwegian spruce — known as the Queen of the Forest — is revered and cosseted by foresters.
When the time comes for it to be transported to London, towards the end of November, schoolchildren in Norway gather to sing carols while the Mayor of Oslo holds one end of a saw and the Lord Mayor of Westminster the other.
The ceremony is only for the cameras, as the complicated job of cutting through the trunk, lifting the tree into the air on a crane and delicately lowering her into a carefully constructed cradle is done by experts.
For every year since 1947, a 20-metre tall tree has been donated to the British people as a thank-you from the Norwegians for British support during World War II.
This year's, measuring 24 metres (78ft), will be put up on Thursday, as is traditional, in London's Trafalgar Square.
Since 1947, the 20-metre tall tree in London's Trafalgar Square (pictured in 2017) has been donated to UK as a thank-you from Norwegians for British support during World War II
Although well-known as a symbol of Christmas, not many people know the true story of heroism behind the annual gift, and the courageous role played all those years ago by the King of Norway.
For as wicked and misguided as the human race has so often been, occasionally there has arisen a person of bravery, integrity and decency, at a point in history when those qualities were under threat.
By his refusal to surrender those values to unspeakable evil, by his love of the country of which he ruled during exile in Britain, King Haakon VII of Norway was such a man — and made popular broadcasts to his country via the BBC through the war.
Aware that he was likely to be found and apprehended by the Nazis after the invasion of neutral Norway in April 1940, he slept in his uniform, fearful they would be able to publish humiliating photographs of him in pyjamas.
Then aged 67, tall, thin, moustachioed, he was a man in grief. Less than two years earlier, his English wife, Maud, the third daughter of Edward VII, had died of cancer.
The royal couple were very popular in Norway, liked for being a personal presence almost in the medieval tradition. Over the years it is estimated that the King gave tens of thousands of private audiences.
However, Maud was always homesick for England and stayed in their house on the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, a wedding present from her father, as often as she could.
There, she could indulge her twin passions, riding and — by taking trains from King's Lynn to London —clothes shopping.
Her diminutive, beautifully clad figure, teetering down Bond Street, usually accompanied by one of her dogs, was a familiar sight in the mid to late-1930s.
During a UK visit in November 1938, Maud died. The King was desolate. He and their much-loved only son Crown Prince Olav, then 35, accompanied her body back to Oslo on HMS Royal Oak, lashed by storms.
After the German invasion of Norway on the night of 8-9 April, 1940, the country's chief weapon against the Nazis was surprise.
For more than 150 years, Norway had been at peace. None of her army officers had ever known combat and Hitler was convinced King Haakon would agree to his demands that he should dismiss his ministers and appoint a government led by the contemptible Vidkun Quisling, leader of the Norwegian Nazi Party.
Not many people know the story of heroism behind the gift, and the courageous role played all those years ago by King Haakon VII of Norway (pictured with Queen Maud and Prince Olav)
Denmark surrendered just six hours after Hitler's troops crossed its border. To do otherwise would be to risk further bloodshed and almost certain defeat. But Haakon and his government were determined Norway would not collaborate with the Nazis.
Not for one moment did they depart from the principle they held dear: namely free, democratic government, legality which followed the will of the people.
The Norwegians had the measure of the gangster state they faced even at this early stage.
As German warships neared Oslo, the national gold reserve, 53 tons of ingots worth about £2billion, was smuggled from the Bank of Norway to a hiding place on the shores of a fjord, with just hours to spare.
The Germans arrived to find the vaults empty and the King gone. He had escaped to a hotel in a village 135 miles north-east of the capital. With him were his son, the government and members of their parliament.
On hearing that they had rejected the German ultimatum to surrender, Hitler ordered that the King should be taken dead or alive.
Soon, low-flying planes were roaring over the tiny village. At one point, father and son threw themselves face down in the snow beside the road as the air attacks took place.
Explosives and incendiary bombs were falling all about them, but King Haakon remained calm as he picked up a machine-gun bullet which had fallen between him and Prince Olav.
'A greeting to me personally from Germany,' he remarked quietly.
For the next two months, the King and his party moved from place to place to evade the Germans.
By April 21, he was
