Exclusive | Fir-geddaboudit! Meet the New Yorker behind the Rockefeller Center tree — who scouts 100 hopefuls across 6 states each year

He’s a real conifer-sseur.

A visit to the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree — dizzyingly tall, dazzlingly lit — is one of NYC’s most treasured holiday rituals.

And behind every sky-high stunner chopped down and brought into the Big Apple to make spirits bright at Christmastime stands just one man with an eye for perfection — most likely one of the only people toiling away in Midtown’s concrete jungle at the job of Head Gardener.

But that’s exactly what Erik Pauze does at Rockefeller Center, where he’s toiled for four decades — the 58-year-old Long Islander told The Post he scouts “easily” 100 trees in a six-state radius each year, saying fir-geddaboudit! to any number of lesser specimens before determining exactly which one is ready for prime time.

The 2024 winner that arrived Saturday — and will be lit with the usual fanfare on Dec. 4 — is a 74-foot-tall, 11-ton Norway Spruce that is also 43 feet in diameter.

The awe-inspiring ornament hails from the tony Berkshires village of West Stockbridge, Mass. — it’s the first Bay State beauty to take pride of place in the fabled plaza since 1959.

The journey from local resident Earl Albert’s backyard began back in 2020, when Pauze was in the area looking at another potential candidate, he said.

“I would come up over the course of those four years…and kind of keep an eye on it,” said the pine pinpointer, who has been in charge of tree selection since 2010.

He often discovers future trees — which must be judged sturdy and symmetrical enough to handle a whopping 50,000 holiday lights — in the vicinity of past chosen ones or front-runners.

After getting to know the tree and its owner — and overseeing the pampering of the future prize by making sure it was well taken care of — Pauze said that “this year it was just right.”

“It was perfect,” he enthused.

Season’s greetings

Building relationships with families like the Alberts and getting to know the communities where they live is a major part of the job, Pauze revealed.

There was the 2021 tree, which came from Elkton, Md., that students from a nearby school gave a grand send-off by lining local streets, and the one from the little town of Florida, in New York’s Hudson Valley, where a giant American flag fluttered to honor the big gift from the small town, back in 2019.

This year, it was all about hanging out — and waiting, sometimes in rocking chairs on the porch of the Albert home, with a full view of the sprightly spruce.

“We just were rocking back and forth like two old buddies there,” Pauze said. “It was great.”

“I’ve spent so much time up there I was starting to call his home my upstate office,” the evergreen enabler joked, mentioning that he’d even gone to a high school varsity football game with the family a couple of Friday nights ago to see their son play.

“Those are the kind of memories that stick out every year,” he said. “And then getting the tree to Rockefeller Center, putting it up and saying, ‘Man, that looks just as good as it did in the yard.’”

Earl was only too happy to donate the whopping piece of forestry to honor his late mother’s love of Christmas, he said.

This week, the brawny biggie was chopped down, lugged onto a 115-foot trailer and driven south for its final act.

How to pick a winner at home

Although much more low profile with just some white lights and ornaments, Pauze is also responsible for choosing his family’s 6- to 7-foot tree for their Suffolk County home each holiday season.

The botanical expert shops much closer to home this time — and has yet to be recognized, he laughed.

“I typically like a Frazier fir for stronger branches at home,” said Pauze.

“You want to make sure it’s not losing any needles. That’s a big point,” he added.

“Sometimes I get a really fresh tree in my house, and it’ll soak up water all the way through New Year’s,” he marveled.

Double- or triple-check that a tree has been “freshly cut on the bottom” — which will ensure it absorbs as much water as possible.