Perennial Yule Tree Falls Short of Forever

The Christmas that never ended is about over at Grace Coveney’s house.

On Thursday, the Calabasas woman will take down the gaily decorated, cut Christmas tree that has stood continuously in the corner of her living room since 1978.

It’s turning brown, she says.

“I’m going to miss it. The house is not going to be the same without it,” Coveney said Friday.

Coveney purchased the 12-foot Douglas fir at an Encino tree lot for $49.55 on Dec. 9, 1978. Since then, it has never been moved. Or watered.

The tree almost toppled over while it was being decorated. But when it seemed to right itself in its stand, “I decided it’s going to stay up as long as it wants,” she said.

In 1979, Coveney staged a party marking the tree’s first anniversary in the Calabasas Park lakeside neighborhood where she has lived for 14 years. The event prompted a story in the National Enquirer a few months later--after the tabloid hired a detective to make sure that the tree wasn’t occasionally being moved in secret.

Two weeks ago, Coveney held a 10th anniversary party for the tree to announce that she was reluctantly taking it down.

‘Time to Start Anew’

“The house isn’t going to be the same without it,” she said. “But it’s time to start anew.”

The survival of the tree has stumped experts.

“Without water, a Douglas fir should start shedding in 3 weeks. The interior needles go first,” said horticulturist Lynn Fluman of Calabasas’ Sperling Nursery. “After 10 years, I’d picture it with not a whole lot left on it.”

Flocking may have helped preserve Coveney’s tree. Its needles are brittle, but they do not fall off when branches are shaken. The tree survived the Whittier and the recent Pasadena earthquakes without losing a needle, said Coveney’s mother, Tessie Sciortino.

Unflocked needles on the outside of the tree are brown, but needles toward the center of the tree have a darker, almost greenish color.

Photos of the tree taken over the years show its decorations in exactly the same place. A layer of dust covers the ornaments.

“People ask me if I have a hole in the floor that it’s growing in. I don’t,” Coveney said.

Next-door neighbor Terry Haverfield said she remembers the day in 1978 when the tree almost fell. Haverfield attended the 1979 and 1988 tree parties.

“I’m positive it’s the same tree,” Haverfield said. “Grace hasn’t moved a thing.”

At first, she worried about the fire danger from the tree, Haverfield said. But these days, she is more concerned “about the spiders that must be living underneath it.”

Lights strung up on the tree have never been turned on “because we never could find the plug to the cord underneath there,” Coveney said. She said she uses the fireplace in her living room but does not allow smoking in her home.

After the tree’s first year, Coveney said, she called the tree’s seller, United Melon Distributors, to say that one of the company’s firs was still up.

“They thought I was a nut,” she said. “They thought it was a crank call.”

After that, she learned to ignore the double takes that the tree unfailingly draws from visitors and the comments from Halloween trick-or-treaters who say she sure has her Christmas tree up early.

“I’m sure people think I’m eccentric. But I’ve had more Christmases than anybody in the world,” Coveney said.

“Every day for the past 10 years has been Christmas for me.”