VATICAN CITY (CNS) – If Germans are known for being punctual, it turns out even their trees show up early.

This year’s Christmas tree from Bavaria’s Bohemian Forest was scheduled to arrive on the feast of St. Nicholas, Dec. 6.

Instead, cameramen and photographers had to scramble Dec. 5, when images starting showing up on the Vatican’s 24-hour live video feed of a giant crane hoisting an 82-foot-tall evergreen in St. Peter’s Square.

Bavarian television was the only crew there for the tree’s dawn debut. They had been tipped off in the middle of the night by the German company trucking the precious cargo to Rome.

“We got here early because the weather was good, the Alps were clear (of snow on the roads) and there was no traffic,” Alois Frank, the trucking company manager, told Catholic News Service.

Holding his lemon-yellow hardhat, Frank said he and his team had left the town of Waldmunchen at 7 a.m. on Dec. 2 and got to Rome exactly 72 hours later. They had left earlier than planned to beat bad weather expected in the North, he said.

This occurred despite an earlier bit of trouble, when a mechanical defect grounded the helicopter with which they had intended to lift the cut tree from its forest home. They ended up using a crane to transfer the conifer onto the open semi that took it to Rome.