Holiday Magic: The Christmas Tree Mystery

The mountain road was slick with ice, and the long-haul trucker’s wife was too worried about him to hang up the phone.

So as German Segura guided his 18-wheeler through the treacherous aftermath of a December storm, he sought to lighten the mood.

What he said next to his wife, Elsa Segura, on that 4,000-mile round trip from Texas to Canada back in 2009, laid the foundations for a festive mystery and a beloved annual tradition.

For the past 16 winters, motorists traveling on a remote stretch of Interstate 90 through the Native American Crow Reservation in Montana have noticed a lone pine tree sticking up from the strip of grass between the northbound and southbound roads.

It stands out because it is decorated for Christmas.

“Some people thought that it was the Native Americans that were doing it,” says Carl Stark, who lives in nearby Sheridan, Wyoming. “I talked to other people that said it was a memorial for somebody that died. So it was a big mystery.”

The explanation comes back to German, 71, who grew up in Mexico, fascinated by the American West.

“I was dreaming that I would be a part of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and a Lone Ranger chasing buffalo,” he says.

After moving to America 46 years ago for a job with a trucking business, he was delighted to be assigned the Texas-Calgary route, which took him through the landscapes of his childhood dreams several times a month.

On that icy December day, he was driving south, trying to reassure his anxious wife on the other end of the telephone line, when he noticed the pine tree sticking out of deep snow.

“I said, ‘I just passed a little orphan in the middle of the road, and he’s got no jacket,’ ” German says. “I’m joking with my wife, and then she said, ‘Stop right there, German Segura. You turn around and give him a jacket!’ ”

So he stopped his truck and quickly opened and shut the door, pretending he was leaving to put a jacket on the orphan he had made up. As he drove away, he felt bad because he hadn’t been true to his word.

A week later, heading to Calgary again, he stopped by the tree and tied on some ribbons, resolving that the following Christmas, he would do the job properly. “I said, ‘On my next trip, I will dress it well. I promise,’ ” he says.

The following year, German returned in November with a handful of decorations. The year after that, he brought even more. But this time, he had company: A police officer showed up, his lights flashing.

“I think, I’m going to get a ticket, and I got a little bit shaky,” German says.

Instead, the police chief asked German whether he was the person who had decorated the tree the two previous years. When German admitted that he was, the officer told him: “Thank you for the gift … [you should] leave a little note, leave a little something that tells us who you are.”

German Segura (third from left) now has local friends who help him trim the tree. Courtesy: German Segura via The Times/News Licensing

Instead, the police chief asked German whether he was the person who had decorated the tree the two previous years. When German admitted that he was, the officer told him: “Thank you for the gift … [you should] leave a little note, leave a little something that tells us who you are.”

So the next year, German brought a sign he had crafted at home, reading “Feliz Navidad from TX,” and stuck it next to the tree. Every November that followed, he returned to the same spot with increasingly elaborate decorations, removing them at the end of the winter.

He did it incognito because he only planned to keep the tradition alive out of love for his wife, he says. “I can’t break my promise to the boss, and from the beginning she loved it.”

But as the years passed, he noticed small additions to the tree: a toy, or a little gift. Then in 2017, he spotted a plastic bag tied to a branch with a note inside. It read: “Thank you. You have no idea how much impact you have in the community.”

The authors were Jonnie and Carl Stark, who had been speculating about the decorator’s identity for years.

The couple had left a phone number, so German contacted them, and the following year they met up and decorated the tree together.

In the years since, the tradition has only grown—along with the tree—and decorating it marks the official start of the holiday season in the area. Locals leave stockings, and the Starks have provided a twinkling set of solar lights.

There have been a few hiccups. The Montana Department of Transportation said the sign could not stay, so each year the group just gets it out for the pictures. But German is thrilled by the joy the tree brings. A Facebook post about it has been inundated with comments.

The Christmas tradition started as a joke that German made to his wife, Elsa. Courtesy: German Segura via The Times/News Licensing

“I really enjoy doing it, reading the comments,” he says. “It makes me cry a little—the little kids, mamas and papas, thanking me for what we do.”

While Elsa, his wife of 50 years, does not travel and enjoys the tree only through her husband’s stories and photos, other friends and family have joined him. His niece came in 2023, and even his boss at the trucking company made the pilgrimage to hang a crystal bauble on the tree.

And while German says he has no plans to retire from long-haul trucking, he now has a group of helpers ready to pitch in when Christmas comes around.

“German started all of this. He wanted no recognition, he wasn’t looking for any notoriety—he was just doing it out of the goodness of his heart,” says Carl Stark. “So we’re just his elves.”

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The Times (10 December 2024), Copyright © 2024 by News UK & Ireland Limited.