Story of lone spruce embodies Christmas spirit

For us, the story started as a newsroom conversation about a photo by Anchorage Daily News’ Bill Roth that was picked up by the Associated Press and then Boston.com in a gallery of Christmas photos.

The photo was No. 34 among 37 photos the website selected for a gallery of Christmas images from around the world. The caption reads, “A solitary spruce tree, decorated with battery-powered holiday lights controlled by a timer, greets motorists traveling the Glenn Highway near Palmer, Alaska, on Sunday afternoon, Dec. 5, 2010.”

That led us to wonder aloud who the people are who light this tree for all of us year after year. Facebook is how we connected with the first of the three kind men we met who light the tree. It was 47 minutes after we posted the question to our page that a reader put us in touch with one of the Secret Santas.

Then the story took an unexpected turn.

When we told readers we were planning to reveal the mystery behind the tree, they insisted we should tell the story, but keep the men’s identities secret. We even used our poll question on frontiersman.com to let readers vote on whether or not we’d tell the men’s names. You voted 190 to 87 for us to keep the secret in our Dec. 18, page 1 story “O Christmas tree.”

On our Facebook page and in reader comments people left thank you notes for Ben, Lucas and Jason, who decorate the tree for all of us.

Ben called this week to tell us the folks who really deserve the credit are his parents, Lucas’s parents and Jason’s parents. We suppose that’s true: thank you for raising men who’d tend a tree twice a day for years in all kinds of weather just to put smiles on commuters’ faces.

On Christmas Eve we learned about a lovely new chapter in this nicest of Christmas stories from an e-mail Ben’s father Richard sent from California.

“Ben just gave me a call, he had stopped by the Christmas tree to be certain that the timer was ‘on all night’ for the lights.

“It’s Christmas, Pa, the lights need to be on,” he said to me.

“Ben walked, crunching frozen stuff, down to the tree. Hey Pa, there are packages under the Tree. There is a box. What is this stuff?

“Hey, it says to the ‘Tree Guy.’

“Should I open them Pa?

“Well, it’s up to you,” his father said.

“It is cold Pa, I gotta get back in the truck.”

Ben opened the gifts on Christmas Eve and shared with his father their contents.

“As he described the gifts and writings to me, I wept,” Richard’s e-mail said.

For us, this story — and its new chapter — embodies the spirit of Christmas and the best parts of life in the Mat-Su Valley.

Kudos to the thoughtful person who left those gifts for the Tree Guys under this joyous tree.

We only wish we’d thought to do the same.