The city had wanted something to rival to the mammoth spruces of Manhattan. It got a limp balsam fir that poked skyward like a wet cat tail.

In the early days of December, the company that brought the tree to Montreal tried to defend it.

“This is a real Christmas tree. That's what a big Christmas tree looks like,” Philippe Pelletier told Global News.

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His family company, Sapin MTL, had promised a specimen taller than the famous one in Rockefeller Center for Montreal's Le Grand Marché de Noël festival. Instead, Sapin delivered something skinnier and shorter, somewhat lumpy.

The Grand Marché Christmas tree wore its lights like a bad rash.

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“It’s decorated with mini red Canadian Tire logos that only add to the tackiness,” CTV News observed on Dec. 5.

Still, the CTV anchor concluded, the tree was “not perfect, but unique, they say — just like this city.”

But as the days to Christmas dwindled, the tree's fame spread past the Canadian border, where reviews were not so kind.

“Looks like an erectile dysfunction,” BuzzFeed quoted from the Twitterverse, where the tree became kindling for a thousand jokes.

Overseas, the Daily Mail simply called it an “embarrassing attempt.”

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Hazing an ugly Christmas tree is something of a Christmas tradition, especially in the online age, when everyone's a critic and embarrassing photos spread forever.

The Washington Post got a flurry of letters to the editor in 2009 about the National Christmas tree — or what reader Bob Johnson called “that lighted, misshapen pyramid on the White House lawn.”

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And a homely municipal Christmas tree made Reading, Pa., infamous for a few days in 2014 before the jabs passed.

Likewise, Montreal's tree has found a bit of goodwill in its final days on earth.

The Daily Mail was still attacking Christmas trees last week, but not in Canada anymore: “Rome slammed for having the 'ugliest Christmas tree in the world.'”

“Is Montreal's Christmas tree ugly,” the Globe and Mail wondered a few days later, “or are we just looking at it wrong?”

#TreeShaming is now a trend on Twitter, where one writer sees something of herself in Montreal's spectacle.

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“Hurray for real trees from Quebec’s forests, hurray for diversity!” a publicist for the Christmas festival said in an email to The Post, noting that Canada's minister of heritage had liked the scored fir.

On Friday, the New York Times published a dispatch from the skinny shadow of the tree itself. Most passersby still despised the thing. One called it “beautiful,” then walked away without leaving a name.

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“The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and we had problems,” said Jean-David Pelletier, Phillipe Pelletier's brother, whose family company was most responsible for the tree.

But, he said: “I think we can celebrate the Christmas magic and stop saying it’s ugly, ugly, ugly.”

His words were noted in the Times, which was redemption, of a sort. The Pelletiers had promised Montreal a tree fit for New York.