In a small, snowy suburban town, a quaint little place, there was a Christmas tree farm like the ones in Hallmark movies, but not quite as tacky or annoying. It was a family-owned tree farm and was full of glorious Pines, Spruces, Firs, Cypresses, Cedars, and any type of Christmas tree you could imagine. The Spruces were grown there, but the rest were brought in from other tree farms in other surrounding counties, and the farms divided the trees up equally to all profit from the diverse selection of wonderful luscious trees.

Most of the trees were excited to leave the farm for the coming holidays and live as the object of admiration by all their peers and respectable families, but Bruce, one of the many Spruce trees that lived on the tree farm, was not ready for this change in his life. He enjoyed the quiet life on the farm and looking out over the fast fields of snow. He enjoyed the friends he already had here on the farm where he had spent his whole life till now. His whole childhood and everything he knew was on this farm, and he didn’t want to leave it behind and move on to the world outside. It was unfamiliar and new. Not necessarily bad, but new and he wasn’t particularly ready for this change and new beginning.

The first family arrived and took his best friend Cypress, a Leyland Cypress tree, and Bruce was crushed. He decided then that he couldn’t live like this anymore. He uprooted himself and to his surprise he had grown two legs of roots and bark. The soft dusting of snow on the ground made his getaway quiet and easy. He replanted himself on the outside of the woods behind the farm house.

That evening while he was resting from his tiring journey that no tree had ever taken before, he heard a rustling, and to his surprise it was the tree farmer himself. He was admiring him. Bruce beamed knowing the admiration that he was getting from his closest thing to a father. He kept his branches still and tried to make sure that every branch was in the perfect array as to be on best behavior in consideration of his earlier behavior, which he still did not regret.

Then with a small pinch on the bark, he had been chopped down and brought inside the house. The whole of the farmer’s family decked him out and made him the crowning jewel of the family. They all said he was their prettiest tree yet. And with that he was home. He didn’t have to ask himself if this change was one he wasn’t ready for because in the truth of it, he had been preparing for it his whole life. He just hadn’t known it.