Quirky Yule Trees Don’t Make the Cut

Christmas trees now have as much personality variation as chickens. They are as distinct from one another as Big Macs. They are as conformist as people who get tattoos and pierce their tongues in the name of “individuality.” Today’s trees would never make poster boy for those Apple Computer “Think Different” ads. If Van Gogh were a Christmas tree today, he’d cut off his other ear to even things out.

Now, I’m not an ardent celebrator of Christmas, except to gamely pay attention to the fact that Jesus Christ stood for nice values that have been pretty well trampled by most of the humans who followed him. But like many folks out there, I have a soft spot in my heart for Old Tannenbaum.

As a kid, I used to get up about 3 a.m. during the holiday season and turn on the tree lights. I would sit alone in the late-night quiet, drinking up the rapturous, pine-scented, phantasmagoric, blinking, twinkling, winking, glinting hulk of impossible wonderment in the corner. Our trees were gorgeous. They were stately, elegant, poised embodiments of tree-ness. Their branches spread out like welcoming arms. They presided, protective and maternal, over our oddball and occasionally unhappy home. They were endorphin-eliciting glories. Talk about, to paraphrase a Ray Bradbury book title, the machinery of joy!

We encircled them with golden garlands and let the heavy tinsel (made with good ol’ carcinogenic lead) hang with splendor to the floor, like the Madonna’s very tresses! The bulbs--fat as grapefruits or tiny as hummingbird eggs--were ruby and emerald and icicle. Some were star-shaped, some were hollowed out, with little frosted Currier & Ives-like winter scenes inside. There were fragile glass angels swinging on sparkly crescent moons, and antique St. Nicks, smiling corduroy reindeer, and a great golden tower for the tip-top that looked like a spire from the Taj Mahal.

And the lights, well, they were strung oh-so-artfully: first the fat, rich-colored ones hung deep within, to illumine the recesses; then the brighter ones arranged with judicious balance among the branches. Then the dainty blinking strands, of the type with individual winkers--all overlain with (good ol’ carcinogenic) spun glass, so to blur and fog the colors into glowing, spiraling galaxies of red, gold, green, turquoise. . . . Flying above, secured to the ceiling with a push-pin, a fat, beatific angel.

Last year, my better half and I decided to get a tree. We’d never done it before. The mood had never hit, and somehow, the ritual just seemed excessive. There were no kids, after all, so . . . why bother? Yet we did, perhaps only for old times’ sake, or to amuse the cat. And it felt nice, getting in the car for the purpose of going to buy a tree. It sparked old synapses, and tweaked emotions long ago learned, and long ago abandoned. You know, like dating. We opted for an “independent” tree lot outside of one of the few non-chain grocery stores around, to afford at least the illusion of being part of a neighborhood.

Of course, shortly after we arrived, we were given the humbug news that the beloved Mar Vista market was going under, and would be converted into a post office.

Still, we were determined to secure our little ghost of Christmases past, smilingly perusing the rows of pine, all set to select just the right one--proper height, symmetry, lyricism. But . . . didn’t the trees all look kind of . . . alike? Nah! Couldn’t be! I imagined vast differences in structure and personality--things that would be more apparent to a child’s eye than to an old goat trying to recapture childhood. I projected entirely separate personalities onto the limbs and trunks and needles.

At last we settled on a candidate, praising its healthy height and stout presence, then somehow jammed it into a Honda Civic and drove home. Bought a bunch of cheap bulbs at Sav-On, and dug up old family ornaments stashed in dusty boxes, unused for decades. Spent the night happily--I might even employ the word, merrily--decorating.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I figured out what was wrong.

It was the tinsel that gave it away. It didn’t hang. It just lay on the outside of the tree, adhering militarily to the outermost shape. Some of it was almost horizontal. I kept walking around, eyeing the thing, muttering: “Something isn’t . . . right . . . here. Fa-la-la-la-la. . . .” Then I realized that all of the decorations I had--at some trouble--hung deep inside the tree were invisible. Huh? I remembered being able to see all the bulbs in my childhood trees, even the ones hanging right near the trunk! Was this a different type? Nope. Same as I’d always gotten. Douglas fir.

“But something . . . isn’t . . . la-la-la-la. . . .”

I fingered the branches . . . hmmm . . . had the ends been . . . cut off? Yes. The Texas Christmas Tree Chainsaw Massacre! Well, some had, but others just seemed to end of their own accord . . . And those branches. Why were they so . . . bushy?

It hit me. This wasn’t a Christmas tree. It was a Christmas bush. There were no branches, like the old days. The thing was as bushy as the White House. New Tannenbaum!

“God,” I said, perhaps tellingly. “This is no Christmas tree. It’s a Christmas clone.”

No wonder the trees in the lot seemed to be alike--they were alike! All carefully cultivated for shape and symmetry at Christmas tree farms spread from here to Canada. All grown to be uniform cones. I wondered: Were they genetically modified? Frankentrees! Starring Forest Karloff and a cast of thousands. I phoned my older brother, in horror of the arboreal monster in the living room.

“Yeah, they’re all that way now,” he said calmly, resignedly. “They’re cultured and grown for the holidays, sure as turkeys. They’re product. The days of picking trees for their quirks or special personalities are long gone. You can get the kind that have widely separated branches (the more costly Noble fir) but I never cared for those.”

“Me, neither!” I said. I noticed that my voice was a little panicked. “I can’t sing ‘O Christmas Tree’ to this. How lovely are your branches? It doesn’t have any branches!”

I phoned a tree farm to confirm my brother’s claims: “It’s customer demand,” one Kevin Klupenger of Evergreen Trees, up in Salem, Ore., told me. “People like the symmetrical bushy shape of the Doug fir, so it became common practice to shear them (as they grow), and every time you shear them, they become bushier. . . . It’s almost impossible to hang Christmas bulbs on a bushy Doug fir without them falling off.”

There it was. The holly, jolly truth. Still, I’m not one to be easily disabused of romantic impulse. This year, I fully intend to get up around 3 a.m., breathe deeply of the late-night quiet (depending on traffic from nearby freeways), and drink up the rapturous, pine-scented, phantasmagoric, blinking, twinkling, winking, glinting hulk of impossible wonderment . . . that sat in a corner of my living room, back when I was about 10 years old.