Tall Tales of Christmas

Hulking Christmas trees handpicked from the slopes of Mt. Shasta are slated for distribution to local retail and religious centers this week. The battle of the bark has begun.

Orange County boasts four of the tallest Christmas trees erected in the country--at Disneyland, Crystal Cathedral, Fashion Island and South Coast Plaza--according to the National Christmas Tree Assn. “It’s a tradition and it’s a key element in our holiday decor,” said John McClintock, publicity manager at Disney, who coordinated the roost of a 60-foot tree in the theme park last weekend.

Fashion Island, as usual, is outdoing even itself with a 115-foot tree, 3 feet taller than last year’s.

The Crystal Cathedral is lighting up a more modest 70-foot white pine, which will be lit later this month on its property.

“We’re not in competition with anybody,” said Nick Klaassen, facility manager at Crystal Cathedral. “We’re just trying to make the holiday nice for the people.”

Since the Crystal Cathedral building is more than 125 feet tall, Klaassen said a tree shorter than 70-feet would be visually dwarfed by the other campus structures.

“The whole idea of a Christmas tree is to get one to fit your needs, whether it’s 6 inches or 100 feet,” said Steve Drake, chief executive officer of the National Christmas Tree Assn.

But a crass assumption still lurks for retailers: a big tree will garner big sales.

“They want to draw people to the center,” said Victor Serrao, owner of Victor’s Strictly Custom Christmas Trees, who also delivered an 87-foot tree Monday to South Coast Plaza.

Fashion Island started using a live tree three years ago, and now has a contract with Victor’s to supply the biggest tree the Mission Viejo firm can cut. The 115-foot fir weighs 25,000 pounds and will be slung with 17,000 ornaments and lights and lit Nov. 20 at 6 p.m.

Bigger isn’t always better, said Serrao, who rescued and wired together the top portion of last year’s 112-foot Fashion Island tree, which snapped off in a rousing Santa Ana windstorm.

Serrao said there seems to be an unofficial competition between the East and West Coasts for biggest Christmas trees, but he added that Orange County’s gigantic trees have the best shapes.

Fashion Island forks over a lot of money to secure his company’s biggest tree, though no one would reveal the amount. It’s at the least in the tens of thousands of dollars.

Tree one-upmanship has a storied American history. The Rockefeller Plaza in New York City has been wrapping a towering tree with twinkly lights every year since 1931.

“The tree at Rockefeller Center is nothing, it’s just a spruce they pulled out of a forest,” Serrao said. “They just make it look good by putting thousands and thousands of lights on it.”

Serrao and his crew painstakingly comb through mountains of trees to handpick the best, fullest specimens for clients. If a tree looks good but is slightly short of heft or weft, Serrao fills it in with what are called “plugs”--branches harvested from other trees and inserted into pre-measured holes.

In a land of largess and superlatives--skyscrapers, mega-malls, minivans and the Big Gulp--Drake said it’s no surprise that Americans pine for the tallest tree available.

“We’ve got to have the tallest building, the fastest car,” he said. “What the heck, why not trees?”

The whopper of all Christmas trees was erected at the Northgate Shopping Center in Seattle, which managed to display a 221-foot Douglas fir in 1950, still logged in the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest Christmas tree.

Strands of lights on super-sized trees are recycled when the holidays end, as are many of the trees, including the ones at Fashion Island and South Coast Plaza. They are ground up and used for mulch, said Serrao, whose company only tags trees that already are slated to be cut down.

Some retailers eschew the notion that the oversized timber has any crass monetary purpose.

“We’re not trying to [attract] people to come shop,” said Stan Taeger, director of office property management at South Coast Plaza. He confesses, though, that the tree-lighting ceremony, to be held at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 30, draws 3,000 to 5,000 people to the mall. The tree weights 15,000 pounds, and will hold the same number of lights. “We just want to make people feel special about Christmas.”

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Towering Tannenbaums

A look at the tallest Christmas trees around the nation:

Fashion Island: 115 feet

South Coast Plaza: 87 feet

Macy’s, San Francisco: 82 feet

Rockefeller Center, New York: 74 feet

Crystal Cathedral: 70 feet

Disneyland: 60 feet

National Tree, Washington, D.C.: 42 feet

Sources: Victor’s Strictly Custom Christmas Trees, National Christmas Tree Assn., National Park Service

Graphics reporting by BRADY MacDONALD / Los Angeles Times