*Tape Click*

Host

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you take Christmas?

Annie Rice

Immediately, and this has happened probably for almost 20 consecutive years of my family. We are the Griswolds like from Vacation and Griswold family Christmas. And so we go out into a field every year and we cut down to our own Christmas tree. And we go to the same place for years. And I’ve got a really long PVC deep hole that we pretend like it’s a javelin and we long jump through the field.

You know, you have to look at all sides. So you do the whole Let’s walk around. Are there any dead spots? Is it too tall? Does it have that one like alfalfa hair sprout at the very top where you can’t put your angel on? And then wait for the proverbial shaft of sunlight to shine down upon just the right Christmas tree and then sing a really bad rendition of the Hallelujah chorus while dad gets down on one knee, chop down the tree.

Then you drag it all, they shake it all, all the needles off. And then we fight to get it in the house and we get at home.

That is 100% real. And we got my brother in law in on the tradition when he married into the family.

We’ve had some duds in the past.

Host

What makes a dead tree?

Annie Rice

One of them we thought was a lot taller in the field than it actually was. We got it into the house and it ended up looking like a bush.

We had one that died almost like within a week of us cutting it down.

But then one – and I remember vividly – our next door neighbor at our old house growing up had to go cut a Christmas tree down for us one year because my entire family was sick, but we didn’t want to not have a real Christmas tree.

And so we trusted somebody else to go do it. And they brought over the house and they put it in. And it was I don’t remember what made it so bad, but it has become Rice family lore; this was the worst Christmas tree we’d ever had.

Host

So who who actually physically does the cutting? Is it a whole family thing or is this a paternal thing?

Annie Rice

To be very honest, it has gone back to fake Christmas trees all the way around.

Host

Really? So what? So that’s a that sounds like a big change.

Annie Rice

As nice as a real Christmas tree is. It’s a lot of upkeep and a lot of cleaning. And so get to the point where none of us wanted the real Christmas tree. So we would just go cut it down to say that we did – because agin time, cleaning, the whole nine yards. But we all have fake trees now.

Host

You said you don’t want a tree that has a crazy sprig on the top where your angel can’t fit. So is it angel the proper way to decorate a tree?

Annie Rice

How? Okay. From my childhood. Yes. From my current. I have my own Christmas tree in my own house. No, but only know because I can’t find an angel that I like to sit on top of my Christmas tree.

Host

So it sits up there and place.

Annie Rice

A big red bow I bought at Walmart a couple of Christmases ago.

Host

Christmas trees. What’s your tradition?

Is there right time to go? Do you plan when to get your tree weeks in advance, or does it just kind of happen one day? Where do you go a lot? Home Depot? Or do you cut your own tree?

These are the questions we don’t ask ourselves, right? Chances are you’re like most people you like me.

There isn’t much debate and there’s very little planning. You just do. It feels right without overthinking it or thinking about it much at all. Really. Have you ever questioned bringing an eight foot tree into your living room?

I have. My grandma and I accidentally walking into the wrong theater when I was seven. And since then, the squirrel scene from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation has haunted me.

Sort of.

I mean, I thought I’d like to find a squirrel in my tree. Maybe.

If we trace Christmas trees all the way back we find the evergreens are part of the first displays of Christmas. But if we go back only a little ways, we’ll again find Christmas trees right there as a key symbol of the new rise of Christmas.

We needed evergreens. And then when society reexamined Christmas, thousands of years later, we again chose to rally around these trees.

What’s weird though, is we could have adopted Christmas trees earlier, but we didn’t. And when we finally did, it wasn’t a gradual spread. It spread like wildfire, literally whole forest of trees disappeared. So many that the president of the U.S. turned against the tradition.

We could have let it go.

But we didn’t. And we wouldn’t.

*Audio Cue*

Oh, Christmas tree.

Oh, Christmas tree.

Host

Today’s episode is in three parts. We’re going to start with the myths, the lies and the story of the Christmas tree in your living room. Then the trimmings, decorations, lights and the rise of fake trees. And finally, we’ll teach you something that I thought was extinct: How you can actually recreate the tree cutting customs that so many cards still celebrate.

This is creating Christmas : The Story of our Christmas Tree.

*Audio Cue*

Oh, Christmas.

Oh, Christmas Tree.

They leaves are so unchanging

Host

Evergreen plants are part of midwinter celebrations from the very beginning because they’re magic, right? Or at least they used to be.

It’s a fact. It’s easy for me to dismiss and hard for me to remember.

Back thousands of years ago, trees died every year. That’s what it looked like. Winter came and trees died. Except for evergreens that for some reason had a magic, allowing them to keep living through the harsh season.

Honestly, even now, if I was asked to explain the science behind this, I wouldn’t be able to do it. And that – it could even be considered magic to me.

It’s this magic that made Evergreen such a popular winter decoration across a vast array of separate cultures. At some point, though, evergreen trees took on a separate and distinct meaning.

There were evergreen decorations, and then one day the tree stood apart as its own thing. It became the earliest version of our Christmas tree.

When and how this happened is not exactly clear, but there are several myths that help explain the origin. Sometimes people confuse these stories with hard fact, but their only guesses are fables. They’re made up. But, they’re really interesting because they help us get a glimpse of what people wanted to believe or what people wanted other people to believe about the trees for thousands of years. That there was a bit of magic in them.

We’ll start with the most prevalent and the oldest story, the magic of Saint Boniface.

Judith Flanders

I’m Judith Flanders. I’m a 19th century social historian. I’m the author of several books on Victorian social life, as well as of Christmas : A History

So the story of the origin of the Christmas tree that frequently appears in Germany is one of a legend that first appears in the 15th century, even though Boniface himself lived in the 8th century. So it took a long time to get this story moving.

In the story, Boniface hears that a human sacrifice is planned to occur under an oak tree sacred to the God Thor. And so he flies into a mighty rage and chops the tree down replacing it I assume because he’s a good ecologist with a small fir tree. Selecting it because it’s evergreen branches, he says, represent Christ’s eternal truths.

And this so over awed the locals – which are clearly very easily overawed – that despite being baulked of their fun human sacrifice, they converted on the spot to Christianity.

Host

While we’re in a storytelling mood. I want to share another origin story, my personal favorite. This one plays much more into the German Grimm’s fairy tale feel.

Storyteller

Once upon a time, there lived a poor woodcutter and his family. One night they heard a knock and opening the door found a ragged orphan child. Inviting him in, they shared what little they had and all went to bed. The next morning, the family was awoken by beautiful singing and found the child standing with angels. The orphan had been the Christ Child. He gave to them a small fir branch singing planted and it would flourish year round bearing fruit in the winter.

And the woodcutter and his family were never hungry again.

Host

There’s one final story I’ll share that works on the Christmas Tree Myth in a similar way as these other stories, but with less magic. That trees developed out of Paradise Place.

Bruce David Forbes

Yeah, I’m not. I’m not sure they’re crucial.

Hi, I’m Bruce. I’m Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at Morningside College, now Morningside University.

What happens is in the Middle Ages, I mean, people are not literate. So how do they learn Bible stories? They learn them by looking at stained glass windows in churches. And then they also had these various plays so that churches at first would sponsor plays that would act out various Bible stories and that would include, you know, the creation story and Adam and Eve and also the birth of Jesus, etc.

Eventually they kind of moved out of the church and just became popular entertainment.

So you’d have troubadours and so on, and they would not focus only on Christmas. In fact, what often they’re trying to tell the whole biblical story or fit in as many Bible stories as we can, but often it was done around a tree because you know, the eating of the apple and Adam and Eve. So the Paradise Tree sometimes was a central symbol of these plays that were about all kinds of things.

And some people say – maybe that’s one of the ways that we get Christmas trees.

I’m just I’m just not sure that central and by the way, the Paradise trees were not necessarily evergreens.

Host

Now these stories, they’re all hiding something in plain sight. They’re false histories. Underlining the importance of Christianity and Christians in the holiday. They demonstrate the religion taking credit for a timeless tradition, evergreen decorations. And with that, the stories are an attempt to change the holiday. Shift it from something pagan to something religious.

Compared to these stories, the reality is a little less fantastic. Christmas trees were probably just a subtle change in winter decoration that evolved without fanfare.

The history of Christmas trees that we can candy goes back to their first appearance in Latvia around the early 1500s, possibly 1510. I moved to Paris by row marriage, but the practice didn’t spread.

Christmas trees did take hold in Germany, though, especially northern Germany as early as 1561 the practice of cutting down a Christmas tree in some German towns grown so popular that they began to worry about their forests disappearing.

So we get the first Christmas tree law.

Period Voice Over

No Berger shall head for Christmas. More than one bush of more than eight shoes lenght.

Host

This location – Northern Germany – plays into another popular myth about the early rituals of Christmas trees. The idea that Martin Luther, from Protestant fame, had a hand in illuminating trees.

Ace Collins

Hi, I’m Collins, and I’m the writer behind the stories, behind the best love songs of Christmas, the stories behind the great traditions of Christmas, and a number of other Christmas books.

You know, it’s amazing what Luther gets credit for. There are pageants that show Luther singing away in a manger to his children. When Away in the manger was actually written in the United States by a Pennsylvania farmer hundreds of years after Luther died.

Martin Luther walking back through the woods one night, saw the light of the moon and the stars coming through trees went immediately back home, grabbed a candle holder, put a candle in it, strapped it to a tree and explained to his children.

Martin Luther Voice Over

The light on this tree represents the light that came into a dark world when Christ was born.

Ace Collins

And so that light illuminated the tree. The tree representing the Trinity and representing eternal life. And you had all of those different symbols that were a part of it at one time.

Little did we know that Luther also began a tradition of burning down houses with candles on trees that continued to last until we finally got electric lights in the mid to late 1800s.

Host

Whether or not Martin Luther actually did begin the practice of putting candles on Christmas trees – probably not – back in the 16th and 17th century, Germans had already cultivated a decoration practice that would still be part of the holiday when the Western world adopted the custom in the 19th century. These trees were adorned with small presents, fruits and candies. In Bremen, there are records of a central town tree where children, especially orphans, were allowed to shake the tree and gather all the loot that fell, which would be fun. So much fun.

Christmas Trees found a home in Germany, and the custom really started to become prevalent as it moved into the 19th century. By then, German nobility had adopted the custom, and from there the tree began to spread through the rest of Europe. Keep in mind, the Protestant movement that tried to end Christmas in Britain, the American colonies, France and a couple of other places – that didn’t happen in Germany. So this tradition was able to spread, while in other countries, Christmas customs faded out.

Christmas trees even found their way into the United States in the late 1700s in the early 1800s, mostly in the German communities. So while Christmas trees had a presence in the U.S. before the mid 1800s, there were still weird enough that a lot of people wrote about seeing them in their diaries and journals.

Then the Christmas building of the mid-19th century took hold.

Really, the whole Christmas tree movement surrounds the publication of a single picture, which we touched on in Part 3 of A History of our Christmas, The Queen Victoria Family Christmas Tree Photo.

A little back story:

Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, who was from Germany, so he brought his country’s Christmas tree customs to Britain. Then in 1848 a holiday engraving of the royal family surrounding their Christmas tree was published in the Illustrated London News and was followed a few years later by its U.S. publication in Goody’s Ladies Book.

Each publication set off a wildly fast love for Christmas trees. Immediately people headed into the woods with axes.

That’s a clear cut story most people hear about the Victorian Christmas tree, but there are two things that are worth noting that are often overlooked.

First, Prince Albert’s Christmas Tree was at Queen Victoria’s first tree. Her grandmother, Queen Charlotte, had already introduced Christmas trees – at least to the royal family’s holiday celebrations.

Second, the same year that this world famous engraving was made, the royal family sent several Christmas trees to schools and army barracks around Britain. Prince Albert was really excited to see the custom in his new country.

Prince Albert Voice Over

Today, I have two children of my own to make gifts to – who, they know not why, are full of happy wonder at the German Christmas tree and it’s gradient candies.

Host

So the popularization of the Christmas tree wasn’t based on its uniqueness. It was how it hit at the right time. Combining family and Middle-Class sensibilities for the sprinkler of Queen Victoria’s popularity.

Now everything up to this point was just the prolog of the Christmas tree because, after the British publication of the picture, Christmas Trees became a staple in both countries and became an icon of the season.

The trees, though, weren’t like the ones we get today.

The picture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with their children shows a table top tree which was how trees at the time were displayed. The decorations pictured were mainly presents, the Christmas presents which hung from the limbs.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Once Christmas trees became widely spread, which happened really fast. Well, that’s when the interesting stuff started happening.

In 1851, the first modern Christmas tree lot was invented in New York City – just a handful of years after the Queen Victoria Engraving, but 300 years after the first German law limiting the cutting of trees. Mark Carr took a sleigh and I’m assuming Crazy Popeye strength into the Catskills and came back with a literal sleigh full of trees to sell and a vacant lot that he rented for $1.

People sold evergreens at markets before, but this is the first time a store was completely devoted to Christmas trees. And so it was really kind of the first opportunity people had to buy a tree without hiking themselves out into the woods.

It was so successful that the same lot the following year cost Mark Carr $100. And with those kind of profit numbers, the idea caught on very quickly.

An interesting side effect of urbanization and Christmas tree lots is that people who no longer lived in the agrarian cycle lost track of exactly when the harvest season occurred. So Christmas tree lots became one of the signals that the holiday season was near.

Anyway, about the proliferation of Christmas trees and Christmas tree lots. Think back to the wild expansion of New York City that we touched on in the history of our Christmas Part 2.

New York began the 1800s with 60,000 people, none of which wanted a Christmas tree. The city would end the century with 3.8 million people, with at least 25% of them wanting a Christmas tree. That’s a lot of timber.

Add to that, the size of the Christmas tree was changing as presents got larger, tabletop trees were too small, so the tree was moved to the floor to make more room for a big pile of gifts.

In the first decade of the 20th century alone 4 million Christmas trees were cut down.

Just like Germany. 340 years earlier, people began to worry about the forests. People like the president, Teddy Roosevelt. He nearly banned Christmas trees in 1902, but was talked out of it when the head of the US Forestry Service suggested that cutting smaller trees lets others thrive – which is super relevant to today, but we’ll come back to that in a bit because we’re not done in the 1880s.

This was a big decade for Christmas trees. The first few years of this decade would bring us electric lights, ornaments and the first artificial tree made of feathers.

That’s after the break.

*Audio Break*

Host

The 1880s is not only a big decade for the Christmas tree, it’s a big decade for Christmas. This is the decade that want, money and the holiday spirit all came together. That’s why it’s often known as the decade where Christmas reached the tipping point and became unstoppable.

To me, looking at the direction the Christmas tree would take, I’m reminded of something I said in our episode, The Holiday The World needed part 3 – that we chose this holiday.

Here in the 1880s, the Western world was again at a point of being given a lot of choices and decided extremely quickly and uniformly what was a part of Christmas and what wan’t?

We’re going to touch on three different visions that we use every year that all started, one way or another, right here. Store-Bought ornaments, electric lights and artificial trees.

One thing I haven’t mentioned that is especially relevant when you hear that – a single string of lights was the equivalent of $350 – was that at this point people got their Christmas tree just before Christmas and only had it up for a few nights indoors. Or, at the latest, until Epiphany on January 6th. So the investment-in-decoration period was much shorter than we’re used to now.

With that, let’s trim the tree.

Period Storyteller “The Little Christmas Tree”

The little tree knew at last that this was why he’d been sheltered in the Greenwood and shaded from the sun. His branches made beautiful. A star for his crown.

Host

If you look at the Queen Victoria Christmas picture – and I’ll put a link in the show notes – you’ll notice that the tree is decorated. The royal family actually decorated it themselves with gingerbread candles, sweets, strings of almonds and raisins. And there are even a few of the earliest and very expensive glass ornaments hung.

When Christmas trees became a regular thing in most homes the decorations used for candies and fancy cakes hung from branches by ribbons or by paper chains. Oddly enough, this way of decorating a tree is why animal crackers – you know, the cookies that come in the box – why it looks like a train car. Why that box has a string.

Ace Collins

If you look at the original small boxes of Animal Crackers, they had strings on them. Everybody now thinks the strings were so kids could carry them around. No, the strings were to hang over Christmas trees.

They were encouraged and used as ornaments, and then kids will get to pull them down on the sixth and eat the cookies out of the boxes.

Host

Like the original engraving of Princess Victoria and the Christmas Tree, decorating for Christmas was a cultural phenomenon which often spread by print.

Ace Collins

There started to be newspaper stories written on how you should decorate a tree. Well, that led to people embracing something else that had been going on in Germany for a long time, and that was glass ornaments. And so suddenly you had glass ornaments. They were expensive, so you could only have a few on the tree.

Host

By the 1870s and 1880s there is beginning to be a range of dedicated Christmas ornaments They took on a bunch of different forms, but mostly they invented and manufactured in Germany.

One type of these developing Christmas tree decorations were glass ball shaped ornaments created in Laucha,Germany named krugel – which literally means ball. They’re first created in the 1840s and they were big, usually hung from the ceiling. But by 1880 they taken on many non-ball forms and shrunken down.

Up to this point, krugel’s were too expensive for most people. But that would change right here in just a matter of years, they would become the go-to Christmas ornament. And that’s really because just one man F.W. Woolworth, who didn’t really believe anyone would want them.

Period Voice Over

On the main streets of America, busy retail stores serve the people of their communities, providing a wide variety of merchandise of good quality at reasonable prices.

Host

In the fall of 1880, Woolworth’s was a brand new store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania – only about a year old. Frank Woolworth was looking to order Christmas toys for the upcoming season when a salesman showed him a set of glass ornaments. Now, Frank, he didn’t think there was a market for these ornaments. He didn’t think people would buy them, and he thought they were too fragile to ship and they’d broken.

The salesman promised to things he’d buy them back if they didn’t sell and they were cheap enough to make that a few broken ornaments didn’t matter. I want to say that again. These glass ornaments are now being made so cheaply, if a few broke, it really didn’t impact the bottom line. This would have been unimaginable 100 years ago.

So despite his best judgment, Woolworth placed a small order of 144 decorations. They arrived just before Christmas, and they sold out the same day in just a few hours. He priced them at $0.03 apiece, about $0.80 today.

This was the first time that these sorts of decorations were attainable by the Middle Class at large. The next year, he doubled his order and it sold out again. From the first year in 1880 to 1939, F.W. Woolworth would end up selling 500 million Christmas bubbles. At the time, that was enough for every man, woman and child in the United States to have five Woolworth ornaments.

It’s also interesting that the salesman at first approached Woolworth about the ornaments continued to sell the frank for decades.

Two years after Frank Woolworth’s first ornament order, we get the first set of electric Christmas lights.

Edward R Johnson. He’s a man who’s been marginalized by history. Many times the story of this invention – his invention – casts him as some sort of lackey or an apprentice to Thomas Edison. But it was actually Johnson that originally hired Edison at the Automatic Telegraph Company when Edison was only 24. Then, when Edison left to form his own company, Johnson helped raise funds and followed him over.

Now, as the story goes, Johnson was the company’s vice president and was looking to sell more light bulbs. So we came up with the idea to replace dangerous Christmas tree candles with electric lights.

It was Johnson using tech at Edison’s company who created the first electric Christmas lights. It was a string of 80 walnut sized red, white and blue bulbs. He wrapped them around this tree and put them on display in his parlor, using a small motor to keep the tree turning.

Then he called the newspaper.

Period Newspaper Reading

There at the rear of the beautiful parlors with a large Christmas tree, presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect. It was brilliantly lighted with many colored globes about as large as an English walnut and was turning some six times a minute on a little pine box. The result was a continuous, twinkling of dancing colors red, white, blue, white, red, blue all evening.

I need not tell you that the scintillating evergreen was a pretty sight. One can hardly imagine anything prettier. It was a superb exhibition.

Host

By 1884, Johnson had made his electric lights a tradition. Now with up to 120 bulbs. But electric lights didn’t catch on.

As manufacturing got underway, a family could buy a string of 28 bulbs for $12, which is roughly $350 today. Johnson’s 120 bulb display would have cost $1600. So at first only the very wealthy were able to plug in their tree and even they only used one or at the absolute most two strings of lights.

This gave way to renting lights in a few years, but still it wasn’t until the price dropped in the early 1900s to about $1.75 a string that electric lights became commonplace.

The last Christmas tree related invention to come out in the 1880s is by far the most surprising one to me – Artificial trees date back over 100 years.

I guess I’ve never really considered when humanity thought…

Voice Over

Trees are great, but we can do better.

Host

…but I definitely imagined that it was sometime after the invention of plastic, sometime when the world was more developed when forests were beginning to disappear.

My real problem is that I was thinking that the 1880s were still wood cabin like. But that’s not the reality for most people at the time. And, as it turns out, forests were disappearing.

It had been over 300 years since Germany tried to slow Christmas tree cutting.

German Law Reading Recall

No Berger shall head for Christmas…

Host

By the late 19th century. Germany’s forests were noticeably less dense as Christmas tree cutters hauled out more and more trees every year. So the thought was less..

Voice Over

…But we can can do better..

Host

…and more…

Voice Over

…Trees are great. So let’s keep them around.

Host

The first artificial tree is to gain popularity we’re German, made out of goose feathers that were dyed green. Starting simple and small. Eventually, they were available up to 98 inches tall with a natural benefits like candle holders.

Even though they were invented in the 1880s, they didn’t really get popular until Sears and Roebuck began advertising them in 1913. Now we don’t have artificial father trees anymore, which I’m kind of bummed out by. But they slowly disappeared because several other manufacturers came up with modern versions using newly invented materials. They were easier to make, became more affordable and could be ,ass-produced because there may only be so many goose feathers in the world, but there is a seemingly endless supply of wire brushes.

By the mid-20th century, artificial trees weren’t looking realistic, but they were still doing pretty well. In 1964, the leading manufacturer sold 150,000 artificial trees. Then a Charlie Brown Christmas debuted in 1965…

*audio tape cue*

It was a massive success – which meant, that year, 15 million people watched Lucy and Charlie Brown turn the artificial tree into the best example of Christmas’ over commercialization and depersonalization. Which – quick aside – we know that those are each important aspects of the holiday since its conception. But anyway…

Artificial trees began outselling real trees in 1991. This year many more homes will put up a fake tree than will bring in a new tree. And the number one reason, according to surveys…

Annie Rice

As nice as a real Christmas tree is it’s a lot of upkeep and a lot of cleaning.

Host

At our house, we have both a real tree and some fake trees. I love the convenience of the annual fake tree, but I really love going to the tree lot or the field or Home Depot and searching out and finding the right real tree.

Kind of like Annie, I love the experience of getting the tree. Maybe a bit more than actually having it at home, but to be honest, I’ve never found the needles to be too much of a problem.

Anyway, this year I found out how to take my Christmas tree up to the next level. With recreation.gov, you and I – we can go into the forest and cut down our own tree. No path, no commercialized version. Just a family with a saw

How can you do it? And what was my experience like wandering through the woods?

That final story after the break.

*Audio Break*

*Song Cue*

Doo doo doo doo

doo doo doo doo doo.

Host

There are certain things you don’t realize are special to  your way of life –  things that other people don’t even know are possible, but you just do them.

I was in Glacier County, Montana, with my family when someone mentioned that the park we were visiting was great for cutting down Christmas trees. This was one of those things. The person we bumped into on their uneventful midweek outdoor walk, just as unremarkably walked into the same woods each holiday to cut down their Christmas tree.

Their annual wild Christmas tree hunt was as normal to them as me going through the tree stalls at Home Depot. But to me, this was every bit as good as finding an honest to god treasure map.

One minute I was living in this world where the wilderness was something just to be seen, and the next I was in this other world where the woods could still be explored…and…manhandled…I guess. You know, where I could just walk out and cut down a wild tree.

This wasn’t Irving’s Bracebridge Hall. This was an actual, idyllic part of the real history of our holiday. That was also still alive and accessible today.

Not being from Montana, I actually had to find out if this was a Glacier County thing or if people like me who lived in cities, could actually do this. And it turns out, you and I, we can. Most states have a place to cut down Christmas trees, even Florida.

Janelle Smith

Our family has been doing it for years. And it’s just such a wonderful tradition. And we have treasured memories.

My name is Janelle Smith and I’m with the Recreation.gov Program and the U.S. Forest Service.

Back in 1956, the San Isabel National Forest offered a family Christmas tree cutting event where they invited people to come out and cut their Christmas trees. And it was just, I think, a fun family event, something that the forest wanted to do, to involve the community again. To help people feel connected. And it’s very appropriate thing to do up in the forest.

Then again in 1965 the Pike National Forest, both of these forests, being in Colorado offered again this is family opportunity for people to come out and cut trees. So yeah, this has been a tradition now for Forest Service for many decades.

Host

So this can actually be beneficial to the forest to go in and cut down a Christmas tree?

Janelle Smith

Yes. And it’s really why the Forest Service started looking at it as a benefit to them. And, not only to creating more healthy, resilient forest, but it’s also a really great way for people to connect to their local forests and have these really wonderful memories. And, when people connect and care for these lands, they’re more likely to take care of them and be really good stewards of those lands moving forward.

Host (on-location)

All right, who’s ready to go cut down a tree?

Jade (wife)

Me.

Augustine (daughter)

Me.

Host (on-location)

All right. Do we know who we’re looking for?

Augustine

Yes.

Host (on-location)

What makes a good tree?

Augustine

Umm…just like…just like this tree.

Host (on-location)

We’re going to go up here a little bit further and then we’re going to be looking along. And then if you see a tree that you like, say, okay, let’s look here and we’ll stop.

Host

As I plan to go down a Christmas tree, my biggest worry is A) what do I bring to cut the tree down with? And B) how hard is it to lug this tree out of the forest?

Janelle Smith

We hear stories about people showing up without some real essentials. The first essential really is know where you’re going. They have maps that are available on Recreation.gov. So, you can see the cutting areas. Usually those are designated. And then once you know where you’re going, some really key essentials: Number one is some way to cut that. Usually just a small hacksaw works just great because you’re cutting a small diameter tree.

Bring a tarp. What you can do is once you cut your tree, you could then lay it on the tarp and drag that out of the forest. We tend to just carriers one on each end, which also works well. And because they’re small diameter trees, they’re not super heavy. So you can manage it pretty well with with one or two people.

Host (on-location)

So we’re looking for a big tree or a little tree?

Augustine

Big.

Host (on-location)

How big are we talking? Are we talking about bigger than me? Or is this a tree for your room or who’s this tree for?

Augustine

All of us.

Host (on-location)

Op, they got one.

Jade

They got one.

Host (on-location)

Did you see that?

Augustine

Yeah, I did. Oh, I just want it to be big.

Host

When you say small diameter tree, what kind of size trees are people able to cut down when we go into the forest?

Janelle Smith

Well, different forests will have a height limit. So I know for the forests that we go into here in the Boise National Forest, I believe it is 12 feet tall, which is just right for our ceiling.

You also want to cut as close to the ground. You don’t want to leave a stump higher than, say, six inches – so you cut as close to the ground as you can in.

And so it’s a manageable tree. We’re not cutting down, you know, the really tall ones.

And we’re really good – I think I mentioned this earlier – about making sure it’s within a grouping of trees. We don’t go find just the perfect tree standing all by itself. We really try to go into areas that that are grouped together.

Augustine

Once we get all these things, we we can’t forget anything. Once we – we can’t forget anything, once we well – go up to the mountains. If we find one and we forget the saw, someone’s going to have to go back and get it.

Janelle Smith

You know, one thing that we also do is even if we think we found the perfect tree within 10 minutes, we don’t stop there. We keep looking because part of the fun is just wandering around in the woods and, looking for that perfect tree that you think’s going to be part of your household for a good three to four weeks.

But I do want to caution people, as I see that wandering around the woods is to really track your footsteps if you’re in snow, make sure that you’re keeping track of where you’ve gone so that you can retrace your steps. Sometimes there really isn’t snow like in the southwest. So you might tie ribbons or flagging on different trees just to make sure you know how to get back to your vehicle.

Host

Oh, that is so good, because I didn’t even think about that. Because when I when I go to do this, I’m just wondering, out in the woods, there’s not like a path. I’m just kind of wandering around right?

Janelle Smith

Exactly. You’re not following a trail. You’re really just wandering. So, yeah, let’s really make sure you know how to get back.

Host (on-location)

Based on what I’m seeing. We are now in the area to find the tree.

Augustine

Yay! I’m so excited. I’m looking out.

Host

What about bugs? And more importantly, what about, like, squirrels or other animals that might be in the trees when I’m cutting them down or taking them home?

Janelle Smith

Well, any of the animals are going to clear out of there as they hear you coming .And and as you cut it down, if there happen to be a sleeping squirrel, they’ll vacate real quick.

With bugs, there certainly are some trees that might have some some bugs. And often with pine trees when there are bugs burrowing into it, their defense mechanism is to pitch them out, meaning that they they will extract a pitch – that sticky residue on the trunks. And so if you see, you know, dozens of these little pitch tubes, it might mean that there are bugs in that tree and just look for a different one.

You’ll be great. It’s so worth it.

Host

How about one last story? Something like the little fir tree, a tree that might be overlooked in a tree branch. That’s our wild Christmas tree.

Story Teller “The Little Fur Tree”

All across the mountains. The trees stand tall and proud…

Host (on-location)

So we found the spot that we’re going to go look for the trees. And we found a little divot to turn the car off of. Do you see any trees from here that look good, Augustine?

Augustine

Umm..all the way out there.

Host (on-location)

Right. Those one on the next side of the other river look really good, right?

Augustine

Uh-uh.

Host (On-Location)

Got to put up extra layers on, because we’re getting here a little dark. All right? Lock the car.

Jade

All right, you got the keys?

Host (on-location)

Got the keys. There we go. All right, let’s hike down here.

I guess, from here on out, guys, it’s just us wandering around to find a tree.

Story Teller “The Little Fur Tree”

Except for a lowly little one. He feels himself small and of no account as he thinks to himself, “I stand lost in the shadows. While the mountain stands forth in glory.”

Host (on-location)

Like that’s a big old pack of trees over here.

It’s getting dark, and we are about to go back and get this other tree. But then we found this one. What do you think about this? This is much taller than I thought we were going to be able to find with the six inch diameter. What do you think Augustine?

Augustine

I like it.

Host (on-location)

I have. Wanna feel it? See if feels like a good old tree.

Augustine

ok.

Jade

Oh, yeah.

Augustine

I like it. Yeah. So.

Jade

So it’s not prickly at all. Feels like a Christmas tree.

Story Teller “The Little Fur Tree”

Why have those who like the big trees, the strong trees, the straight trees, why have they now come for me?

Host (On-location)

A nice little pencil tree? What do you think Augustine.

Augustine

Yes. Can we please get it.

Host (on-location)

All right. Here we go.

Cut. Cut, cut, cut, cut.

Oh man..

Augustine

Go Dad. Go Dad. Go Dad.

Host (on-location)

Oh, wow. This is really coming down faster than I thought, okay? It’s just like, once you get started, you just have to.

Jade

Just keep going.

Host (on-location)

You have to keep going. Yeah.

All right. are you pushing on it?

Jade

Yeah, I’m pushing…

Host (on-location)

Here it comes. And wait. Nope, nope.

The blade is stuck when you move it. You need to hold the tree up, like it’s a tree.

Jade

Yep.

Host (on-location)

Then you gotta pull this blade out.

Augustine

Are we done.

Jade

Yeah, the blade might be done.

Host (on-location)

Oh, it’s all the way through.

All right, we got a tree – you wanna pick it up?

There we go. What do you think Augustine?

Augustine

Yeah, I don’t forget the saw.

Host (on-location)

I got the saw. All right. That stump all the way down. Well, that’s a big old tree. Look at that tree. Oh, it’s a nice little pencil tree.

Augustine

Yeah.

Jade

Yeah. That’s awesome.

Story Teller “The Little Fur Tree”

And so as evening fell, the little tree knew at last that this was why he’d been sheltered in the green wood and shaded from the sun. Now, he knew that of all the forest he had been chosen to bring joy to the world. And the night before Christmas, joy and love and peace on the night before Christmas.

Host

Hiking out the Christmas tree forest and cutting down our own tree was something that I’ll never forget. Go do this. Even if you aren’t an outdoorsy person, even if you don’t end up cutting down a tree, go. There’s something about evergreens in winter that’s just magic.

I do have to mention, though, that having wild tree in our house is a pretty constant reminder that I killed this tree. It was just fine in a tree bunch, and we decided to take it. Which is a different Christmas feeling.

Our little tree is currently standing tall and decorated on our patio, and I’ll post a picture on the website.

Creating Christmas was produced this week by me, Bobbie Christian and Oversaturated Inc. Special thanks today to :

my friend Annie Rice, who is maybe the most caring drama teacher in Middle Tennessee,

Judith Flanders and her book Christmas A Biography,

Bruce David Forbes and his book Christmas Candide History.

Ace Collins and his book Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas.

And Janelle Smith with Recreation Deck of especially to her for helping us with one of the best holiday memories my family has ever had and making sure we made it back to the car at the end.

We only got a chance to touch on the very beginning of Christmas tree decorations in this episode. There’s so much more to the story, including the 1900s backlash on decorating at all – naked trees. If you want to find out more, I recommend the book Merry Christmas by Karl Anne Marlene. You can find a link to that book as well as more episodes in our entire fat and jolly bibliography on our website, Creating Christmas podcast.com

We’re releasing new episodes every week leading up to Christmas.

So until next time. Stay Jolly.

*Music Outra*

…Shining on Christmas stars. Shine on.