The holiday spirit, delivered by Todd’s Christmas Trees

It’s a December evening so cold I can see my breath, and I’m wandering Long Beach in search of the Christmas spirit. I find pretty much what I’d expected: the latest in electric icicles dangling along roof lines, inflatable manger displays jiggling in front yards and pinup Santas everywhere striking delivering-presents poses. Check, check and check.

Then, on an oblong parcel of property on Ximeno—scrunched between the businesses on Seventh St. and the neighborhoods of Belmont Heights—I come across a Christmas tree lot. Double check? As a matter of fact, I do.

A half-century ago, the last of the Red Car commuter trains—the Long Beach-to-Los Angeles line—was still operating along this swath of land. This evening, as I walk where the tracks used to run, I come across a trailer parked off to the side. Next to it, a few beanie-and-flannel-clad men are huddled around a makeshift fire. Above their heads, bare-bulb lights are glowing. In the background, Christmas music is on endless repeat.

The sign says this is Todd’s Christmas Trees, not that locals need to read that placard. They only need to look at the calendar because the Todd family has been spending Decembers around here almost since the Red Car stopped passing through.

In fact, one of the bundled-up guys around the little fire is Richard Todd, the youngest and latest in a series of family members who have overseen this Christmas tradition in Long Beach.

“I was born into it, man,” says Todd, scanning the expanse of evergreens as though looking back across his life. “All I can remember of my earliest Christmas is coming to these lots.”

Not that Todd has spent every December selling trees. Years ago, he moved to Colorado. But when the weather turned cold and Todd wasn’t around the Christmas tree lot, he felt something like separation anxiety—always feeling like he needed to be doing something: setting up lights, trimming trees, chopping stumps, handing out candy. Without that, it didn’t feel like Christmas.

“This is all I know. I tried to get away, but there was an empty space in here,” says Todd, pointing a gloved finger toward his heart. “I was 3 or 4 when I can first remember coming down here and trying to help out. Now there is no getting away. Once you’re family, you’re family.”

Jan and Gene Todd—Richard’s parents—started the Christmas tree lot in 1959, shortly after they graduated from Lakewood High School and got married. What began as a seasonal business soon grew into a family tradition, and then part of the way the city has celebrated the holiday. Gene passed away in 2005, but Jan continues to work at the lot with her children.

“We were 28 years across the street right there,” Todd says, gesturing across Ximeno, still irritated by the memory of how his family had to move when the land was bought by a competitor who apparently hoped to capitalize on the business the Todd family had built. “After a couple of years, he [the competitor] passed away and the family wanted nothing to do with the business so they just let it go. We’ve been over here ever since, doing what we do.”

What they do is obvious, but Todd won’t divulge how they do it—how many trees they buy and sell, how much they make per tree—or how they’re doing.

“Those are some of the family secrets,” he says. “We have our same clientèle, they all come to us, they know how great our trees are.”

No, he’s not shy about it.

“If you go to Home Depot, your tree smells like foot,” Todd says. “But our trees smell like trees because they’re from Oregon and Washington. And we’re from here.”

Todd works a family business the other 11 months of the year, too—“I wish we could say that we live on the Island during the rest of year,” he laughs—at a painting business that includes his brother and brother-in-law. They paint jails, libraries, hospitals and children’s homes in Orange County.

“There’s really not a lot of money in selling Christmas trees,” Todd acknowledges. “We’re in a comfortable space, but we still have to work. And selling Christmas trees has kept us surviving through our other jobs.”

Todd admits that Christmas tree sales have slipped this season, along with the economy. But just as the Todd family has kept the holiday spirit alive for hundreds of Long Beach families over the decades, so have those families helped insulate the Todds from a deep dip in profits.

“People come to us year after year,” Todd says. “We’re landmarks for a lot of people in town. We’ve been here 50 years and I hope we go another 50.”

This year, like every year, Todd’s Christmas Trees will be open on Christmas Eve.

“It’s tradition for a lot of families to come get their trees on the last day,” says Todd. “My father always kept the lot open on the last day, so we do the same.”

We chat a little more and Todd gives me a quick tour of the trees before sending me off with a firm handshake. My shoes are a little muddy as I walk off the lot. My nose is a bit cold. I watch my breath come out in even-thicker clouds.

Then my phone rings. It’s my mom, calling from Santa Rosa, asking me how big of a tree she should get this year. I tell her I don’t really care, as long as it comes from a place that embodies the Christmas spirit. And as long as it doesn’t smell like foot.

Tags: belmont heights, lakewood, Long Beach, todd's christmas trees