JJ’s (now closed) Coffee Shop.
When I heard that more than a hundred Christmas trees were stolen from a Boy Scout troop in Tennessee my second thought was, what’s the value of a stolen Christmas tree? My first thought, obviously, was, what kind of jerk steals a bunch of Christmas trees? And this wasn’t a spontaneous one-person job either. You don’t just wander through a Christmas tree lot in an oversized coat and discreetly slip a ten-foot blue spruce into your pocket. Although if you can do that you should perform that trick for Penn & Teller, but that’s another story. This was clearly some southern Charlie Croker and his gang. As for the value I asked a friend who’d worked on Christmas tree lots and he just said, “You’d be surprised.” Good Christmas trees can go for a lot of money, which may be why I see so many Scout troops selling them around this time of year, and why there have been multiple tree thefts around the country. I’m sorry the troops are taking a pretty big financial hit and also that the Scouts generally now have to worry about extra security.
As a former Boy Scout, and Eagle Scout, myself I also feel like I missed out on something since my troop never sold Christmas trees. We made a lot of money from car washes—we were lucky that our regular meeting place was a church that was right on the corner of a very busy intersection. A few times a bona fide eighteen-wheeler drove in and offered us fifty bucks for a “wash”, which was really an act of charity since most of us weren’t much taller than the tires. We also made a fair amount from rummage sales and raffles. Selling Christmas trees would have been a lot of fun. I’d guess some of the Scouts get to spend the night among the trees which, for me, would have been a lot of fun because I’d never have thought anyone would actually steal any trees. So much for that.
One of the sad aspects of this story is that live Christmas trees take a long time to grow and then are only used for such a short time. At least that was my first thought. Then I remembered that sometimes as soon as the 27th or 28th of December I’ve seen trees piled up at a local park. They’re turned into mulch which gets donated to local parks, including Radnor Lake. I’ve been a regular hiker and volunteer at Radnor. One of my jobs has even been spreading mulch on trails. I’ve probably walked on, and spread the remains of, former Christmas trees. I know it doesn’t help the troop but at least there is a bright side that, stolen or not, all those old trees will still benefit people in the coming year.
Ken and I stopped cutting live trees years ago and now every year we buy a small potted blue spruce that we can plant in our yard. They cost about the same as a cut tree but now we have a couple that are over 8 feet tall! Merry Christmas, Christopher!
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That’s an excellent idea. My grandfather had a blue spruce in his yard when I was growing up. They’re such distinctive and beautiful trees. Even in the middle of summer seeing that tree in his yard felt like a little bit of Christmas.
Thanks for the silver lining at then end, Chris — it was the tinsel on the tree.
Once you bring out the tinsel that’s a wrap.