MINERAL, Calif. — For many people Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a Christmas tree, but every year the price of a tree seems to go up. In many cases you would be hard pressed to find one at a tree lot for under $75, but there is one place where you can get a Christmas tree for less than the price of a movie ticket.
Well before kids were part of the picture, the Outland and Robins families made it a tradition to go to the Lassen National Forest district office in Chester to pick up their Christmas tree permit, which costs just $10. The reason for the low price? You must hunt down and cut your own tree.
Lassen is one of 10 national forests in California who permit the public to cut down a Christmas tree. The Outland and Robins family are headed to Morgan Summit, just outside Lassen Volcanic National Park. It's where the black top pavement meets the snow, and this year the kids are picking out the trees with mom’s approval, of course.
Cooper and Emmit Outlander are confident in what they want in a tree.
“I am looking for a round tree, no bare spots,” said Emmit.
Kinley and Tessa Robins, on the other hand, are open to some suggestions.
“It's round and it does have branches where they should be,” said Kinley as she points to a tree that caught her eye.
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Finding the perfect Christmas tree didn’t used to be this hard. Long before Christianity, the Egyptians, Romans, and other cultures celebrated winter solstice simply by putting up green plants in their homes.
The Germans are credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we know it. In medieval times they decorated the trees with apples. Candles were added sometime in the 16th century.
As German migrants moved to other countries, they brought with them the Christmas tree tradition. Sometime in the 1840s Queen Victoria took a liking to Christmas trees and made them even more popular.
In the 1880s Thomas Edison’s partner Edward Johnson decorated his tree with a string of newly invented lightbulbs. By 1900, one in five Americans had a Christmas tree in their home.
The earliest records of Christmas tree cutting in a National Forest date back to the 1930s in California’s Eldorado and Shasta Trinity National Forests. Back then it was common for people to cut the top off tall trees. That’s not allowed anymore.
More recently, the Forest Service found cutting a Christmas tree in a national forest can help prevent wildfires by removing small, overgrown trees.
“It helps thin out some of the hazards we have and by cutting out some of the Christmas trees you are leaving spacing for other trees to grow larger that are left behind,” said district forest ranger Russel Nickerson.
The permit program has been around for decades and was started in part to attract more people visit their nearby National Forest. Cutting your own tree is a lot more work than just picking one out in a parking lot but for many families, the work is worth the memories. Christmas Tree Permits generally go on sale in October or November.
Don't forget to bring a saw and some rope to tie your tree down!
MORE HOLIDAY FUN ON THE BACKROADS: Backroads host John Bartell visits some of his favorite winter and holiday spots.