Americans will buy at least 25 million fresh-cut Christmas trees this year but the best one of them—the pinnacle in pine perfection—is the 8-foot Fraser Fir from Laurel Springs, North Carolina, that sold for $145 about 12:30 p.m. Nov. 30 on a church lawn in Lakeland, Florida.
So decreed yule arborists Mason Hayes, 14, and his brother, Jackson, 11—the specialists who found their perfect Christmas tree after an hour of foraging through Booger Mountain’s trees at Ardella Baptist Church on a sunny Saturday in central Florida.
“It has to be fat—no gaps at the top or the bottom,” Mason said, rejecting one tree after another….