(JAIME CAMPOS/Gloucester Daily Times) A woman on her phone walks past the city's Lobster Trap Christmas Tree outside the police station on Main Street. 

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Some traditions survive despite a pandemic — and they may even smell a little fishy if you stand close enough.

The country’s oldest fishing port is celebrating the holidays once again with a community Christmas tree made from a stack of lobster traps, ornamented with lights and, soon enough, buoys painted by local children.

“There is something really special about the whole thing,” said David Brooks, founder of Cape Ann Art Haven, which assembles and decorates the tree made from 300 traps.

The lobster trap tree outside the Gloucester police station was put together this year during a nor’easter, an ocean storm that lashes the coast with wind and, during the winter months, snow. Brooks and eight elves assembled the tree, which has been a tradition in this city for at least a generation.

While the lobster trap tree usually is built with an entrance, so that passersby can admire the structure from the inside out, it won’t be open this year in order to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

The pandemic is also scrambling the annual “tree lighting,” usually a festive event that closes out a holiday festival in this seaport’s downtown. Instead it will be streamed online, at a time and date to be determined, so as to limit the size of the gathering.

The traps used to assemble the tree are supplied by the Brooks Trap Mill in Thomaston, Maine, and coordinated by a local supplier, Three Lantern Marine.

“They have been huge supporters,” Brooks said.

Over the course of several weekends, Art Haven and other local organizations arranged for schoolchildren to paint the 500 buoys that will adorn this year’s tree.

“It was really nice,” said Traci Corbett, Art Haven’s executive director.

Brooks said the project is a distinctly Gloucester tradition.

“The tree, the buoys, the lights — it is a representation of the community and celebrating the future of the kids who paint the buoys,” he said.

Taylor Ann Bradford writes for the Gloucester, Mass., Daily Times.