One of my memories of home is the hunting for and cutting down of the family Christmas tree. One advantage of living in Heber and having a father who worked for the Forest Service was that Dad knew a lot of the places where nice Christmas trees could be found. In all my growing up years, we always had a live Christmas tree. Almost no one in those days had artificial trees. Most families in Heber cut their own trees. There were no Christmas tree lots where you could go and buy one.
To cut a Christmas tree we had to have a Christmas tree tag. The tag was usually Christmas red in color and essentially stated that it was a permit to cut one tree. There were no restrictions on where to find a tree. That was a matter of your knowledge of where good trees were to be found or in our case, Dad’s knowledge.
Usually about 2 weeks before Christmas, Mom would mention that we needed to get a tree. The whole family usually went with Dad to select and cut the tree. Sometimes Dad would cut trees for our extended family in the valley as well.
There were different types of trees that could be used for Christmas trees. Those closest to Heber were Pinion trees. We never liked them for Christmas trees because they were not as pretty and did not smell as good as fir trees. As you went up in elevation the next type of trees were Douglas Fir’s. If there was a lot of snow on the mountain, we sometimes settled for a Douglas Fir tree. The very best and most popular type trees we liked for Christmas trees were the White Fir. They were the prettiest and they smelled the best and the branches were in layers so that it was easy to decorate them.
We would take axe and saw in hand and drive up Black Canyon until we got to a place where Dad knew there were lots of trees. Then the hunt was on for the perfect tree. The boys would scatter out looking for just the perfect one. The perfect one had the right Christmas tree shape and had equally spaced branches. There were lots of OK Christmas trees but we were searching for the “Perfect Tree” for our family. It usually took at least half an hour for someone to fine one they thought was the best. Mom was usually the final judge. Dad did not like to cut the top out of larger trees so we had to find one that could be cut off at the ground. We usually had a tree that was six or seven feet tall when mounted in the Christmas Tree stand. Usually the best trees were located on rather steep slopes. When there was snow on the ground and there usually was, it was fun trying to stand up while cutting the trees. Dad usually let us cut the trees if we were big enough. If we had to much trouble, he would cut them for us.
After cutting the tree or trees, we had to drag them back to the car. Since the trees were quite wide at the bottom, we would bag them. We always had gunny sacks left over from the feed we bought for our cow. We would cut open the seam on the bottom of the bag and just slip the bag over the tree from the bottom. The sack would hold the branches in so that we could get several trees into the trunk of the car. Then it was off home where we cut the bottom of the tree trunk off square with a saw and mounted the tree in the Christmas tree stand.
Mom liked to decorate our tree with little pieces of brightly wrapped candy as well as the traditional ornaments. When people visited us or when she had her primary class at our house, everyone got to pick a piece of candy from the tree before leaving. By Christmas Day, the tree was mostly bare of the candy. She also liked to hang the little candy canes on the tree. For most of my life we always had an “edible tree”. A lot of people in town and especially the kids thought our tree was the “best one in town”.
One year our scout troop decided to cut Christmas trees as a money making project. We made arrangements with a troop in Mesa to sell the trees we would cut. We cut about two hundred Christmas trees that year and delivered them to the troop in Mesa. They paid us a flat fee per tree and then sold them for whatever they could get for them. Both troops probably came out OK on the deal. I know our troop did.