We have our Christmas trees up — a little later than usual this year. Just about everything seems to take longer these days… maybe time doesn’t really fly — we just work slower.
Anyhow I was thinking about Christmas trees. Until we moved here to West Virginia, we always had a real Christmas tree and when our kids were young, they always went with us to get it. Even though the trees were somewhat expensive, messy and just generally a hassle to get hone and set up, it was always an enjoyable experience.
When Kelly and David were young, we always took them to see the “National Christmas Tree” on the Mall in Washington. It was a kind of “tradition” for a few years. After we’d done the routine of visiting the tree on the Mall for a number of years, I learned that the tree that is cut down every year and decorated on the Mall isn’t the real National Christmas Tree.
The Nation’s Christmas Tree is alive and well in the Sequoia National Forest in California. The tree is over 1,700 years old, is 267 feet tall and goes by the name General Grant Tree.
The General Grant Tree was declared the Nation’s Christmas Tree in 1926 by President Calvin Coolidge — it was officially dedicated as the Nation’s Christmas Tree on April 28, 1926 by the United States Department of the Interior. On October 1, 1949, Sanger, California was recognized by the Post Office Department as the Nation’s Christmas Tree City. Congress, by public law 441, made the General Grant Tree a National Shrine on March 29, 1956.
The story as to how the tree was selected as the national tree for the United States, goes something like this… Charles E. Lee of Sanger, California stood next to a little girl and they both looked up at the tree in 1924. As they admired the tree, the girl exclaimed, “what a wonderful Christmas tree it would be!” The idea stayed with Lee, and in 1925 he organized the first Christmas program, held at the Grant Tree at noon on Christmas Day. Lee worked with the Sanger Chamber of Commerce and wrote to President Calvin Coolidge, who designated the General Grant as the Nation’s Christmas Tree on April 28 in 1926.
The Sanger Chamber of Commerce continues to sponsor an annual Christmas “Trek to the Tree” on the second Sunday of December — always at 2:30 p.m.
The little girl that suggested the tree would be a “lovely Christmas tree,” supposedly ran off into the grove — no one knows her name. But they never forgot her words.
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