“Well, maybe this is it,” I find myself thinking disconsolately: “the year without a Yule tree.”

It's my first time at an urban tree lot. Thoroughly disheartened, I wander the rows of overpriced green cones. Clearly, there's nothing here for me.

For years, we'd drive up North to the Fawn Lake tree farm. Twenty-three bucks and cut your own, no frills. Make your offering and take your pick.

But unshaven old Jake is retired now and so here I am, feeling like Charlie Brown. These trees have all been groomed to within an inch of their lives: perfect cones, Platonic ideals of “Yule tree”, branches so thick that I have to wonder: Where do you put the ornaments? Some have even—I can scarcely believe my eyes—been spray-painted green.

Not to mention the price. Ten bucks a foot, ye gods. $140 buys a lot of groceries.

Every year I remind myself: this is a choice. Every year I remind myself: it will still be Yule without it.

Every year I do it anyway. If this is what's on offer, though....

Then, out back by the dumpster, I finally find what I'm looking for.

Fence-row trees.

Every single one of those perfect geometric solids up front bears a little white vinyl ID tag, telling you what species and variety it is: White Pine, Blue Spruce, Frazer Fir. These trees—as it happens, they're all balsams—have tags too, but they all just say: Natural.

Bird-sown. Tall, scraggly, irregular.

Real trees, not geometric shapes.

They don't cost $10 a foot, either.

Words spring to my lips, the ritual phrase with which you greet the sight of a Yule log being borne indoors, or (these days) a home-bound tree strapped to the top of a car.

“Good Morning Yule,” I say.