When you’re a Christmas tree guy, especially one who deals in the tallest of triangular holiday conifers, you curse the wind.
You have nightmares about those hot autumn days in Southern California when the Santa Ana winds begin to howl at 30 to 40 miles per hour with gusts that reach 60.
When you’re a Christmas tree guy, you envision the tops of your trees falling off like so many coffee cups on the roof of your car on the freeway. You dread hearing TV weather reporters using phrases like “high-pressure region” and “offshore flow” in the same sentence.
“It’s the Santa Ana winds,” Victor Serrao said, shaking his head. “That’s the only thing.”
Serrao, 48, of Laguna Niguel, is a Christmas tree guy.
On Oct. 21, you read that right, 10 days BEFORE Halloween, Serrao installed what he is calling the “tallest Christmas tree in the world” at the Outlets at San Clemente. Quick fact check … there have been taller Christmas trees in history, but not in America. One tree on Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro was reported to be 278 feet tall, and one Christmas market tree in Dortmund, Germany was reported to be a 145-footer.
The previous U.S. record was a tie – 110-foot tall trees in Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Clemente (last year).
This tree breaks the U.S. tie.
And now, like he has done for most of the years of his adult life, Serrao hopes the guy-wires hold. He hopes against the wind.
Because if they hold (which they almost always do), the 125-foot white fir which was transported, ever so slowly, from the Mt. Shasta region of Northern California, will be seen for as many as 5 or 6 miles along the 5 Freeway. If it is still standing in 65 days, thousands will have called this tree spectacular.
On Oct. 21, Steve Craig, who owns the Outlets, stood on a balcony just after the base of the 20,000-pound tree was lowered into a 10-foot hole, with a satisfied smile on his face. The tree cost him $125,000 ($1,000 per foot), so satisfied was a good thing for him to be.
Craig said he was thinking about 2020 and the global pandemic that has consumed everyone. He was thinking “about anxiety and depression,” he said. “Having something everybody can agree on and enjoy together is pretty special.”
The roots of this white fir stretch across Southern California, through Serrao’s family tree, through decades in the Christmas tree business, through Craig’s wish for the biggest and the best.
And it started a year ago with a conversation between Serrao and Craig.
Craig, whose properties in Phoenix, Los Angeles (the Citadel Outlets) and San Clemente had been home to the previous biggest American trees, said he wanted to go bigger. He’s been planning this a long time. He had the ground at the Outlets made with steel supports so it could hold the weight of the huge crane it would take to put the tree in place.
“Victor, we need to definitively say who has the bigger tree,” Craig said.
Serrao was born for this.
‘He’s a showman’
Vito Serrao, who is Victor’s father, was a heating and air conditioning man in the 1950s.
Every year, he saw his business dip after the summer and approaching the holidays. Vito’s brother, Tom, seemed to have the perfect solution. Tom Serrao opened a Christmas tree lot.
In the late 1950s, Vito opened his own lot in Los Alamitos at the corner of Katella and Los Alamitos boulevards. He had four daughters at the time: Vicky, Valerie, Vonda and Vanessa (Victor, the baby, wasn’t born until 1972). They lived in Norwalk.
The family legend goes like this:
One day, a woman with pink hair came onto the lot. She was carrying a matching pink poodle. She asked Vito if he could flock a Christmas tree to match the color of her poodle and her hair.
Vito said he could. “He’s a showman,” Victor said of his father. Today, Vito is 87 and living in Arizona, loving his Frank Sinatra songs.
Vito made a pink tree for the lady. Then the requests started. They came from banks or office buildings. Could Vito flock a tree with colors to match the bank’s interior?
And could he find a taller tree?
Yes and yes.
After about five years, Vito closed the lot because his custom tree decorating business was taking off. His newest client? Disneyland.
“Vito got a meeting with the Disney people,” Victor said. “They wanted a tree bigger than he had ever done.”
Vito said yes. Are you sensing the pattern here? The first year, it was about a 35-footer. He shot the tree with glue, then sprayed styrofoam beads on it to look like thick snow.
Once Disneyland was a client, it was easy to get others to follow. Vito made big trees for the Lakewood Mall and for ABC Entertainment.
‘I cut it personally’
Victor Serrao thought he was going to be a psychologist. After he graduated from Mission Viejo High, he went to Cal State San Marcos. His goal was to become a professor of psychology.
The problem was … he didn’t really like talking with people about their problems.
So he started working with his dad in heating and air conditioning.
In the winter, naturally, Serrao also worked on Christmas trees.
When Serrao got involved with selling Christmas trees, three or four accounts jumped to 22.
He booked a job to decorate a 60-foot tree in front of a restaurant in Ireland. He flew on a plane with 16 giant boxes full of ornaments. Getting through customs was a bit difficult because Irish officials couldn’t believe a restaurant owner would hire a man from America to decorate a tree.
When he finally got his passport stamped, he went to the restaurant and found that the tree was only 25 feet tall. Its branches weren’t strong enough to support the elaborate ornaments he brought. So, with Irish officials following him, he marched into the forest and cut down a 60-foot tree.
“I cut it personally,” he said.
Once, he got a contract in Singapore. The government there paid $250,000 to have a tree from California flown across the Pacific Ocean.
Within the next decade, Serrao said, he will dedicate himself to Christmas trees full-time. His business, called Victor’s Custom Christmas Trees, employs 40 people and operates a warehouse and office in San Juan Capistrano.
He starts planning for Christmas each February, visits Northern California to scout for trees in the summer months, then moves the big trees in October.
Only once did his wind nightmare come true.
“Newport Beach,” Serrao said, like he was starting a horror story. “Christmas Day. 6 a.m. The top of the tree broke off.”
Serrao got a call.
Here’s the thing about giant Christmas trees. Who really looks at the tippy top?
Answer: No one.
Victor decided not to do anything. He cleaned up the broken part of the tree, and that was it.
“Nobody realized the top was gone,” Serrao said.
Saved the right tree
They search for fir trees in places like Truckee, Sierraville, Lake Tahoe and Mt. Shasta. In 2015, Serrao noticed a majestic white fir. He made a mental note for the right occasion.
That occasion came when Steve Craig challenged him to go bigger.
“We were saving this one,” Serrao said.
The tree that now stands at the Outlets has a 24-inch trunk and measures 34 feet from branch tip to branch tip.
It was loaded on a truck Oct. 18 and driven south. Because of highway rules, the truck could only travel between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
“It completely brings in everybody’s eye,” Serrao said.
The plan is for the tree to be decorated over the next few weeks by Serrao’s family. Then it will be officially lit in a socially distanced ceremony Nov. 7.
As for Victor Serrao, his home usually has two trees.
One sits in front of a picture window. That one is for show. The second tree is in the living room with all the personal family ornaments on it.
They’re tiny.
Only 10 and 7 feet, he said.
And he doesn’t have to worry about the wind.
