Trim the family tree

For 25 Christmases, a spruce in Corona del Mar has grown with the family whose deck is its non-holiday home. Inside the Dreyfus home sits the little Christmas tree that could.

It has survived 25 winters on a Corona del Mar deck. It has been watered, decorated and occasionally forgotten, all of which has played a role in its current, slightly crooked form.

Patricia and Gary Dreyfus’ children have all left home. Presents have been unwrapped and stuffed inside closets. But the tree has been a constant.

“It’s amazing it survived this long,” said Newport Beach resident Susan Vigil, one of the Dreyfuses’ three daughters. “What we enjoy about it is it changes every year. Sometimes it’s bursting with new growth, sometimes it has minimal branches.

“It mirrors our lives as far as growing and changing.”

For a quarter of a century, the Dreyfuses have brought the spruce out from the cold on the day after Thanksgiving. Patricia invites her grandchildren -- most of whom live out of town -- to the house to dress the tree with homemade ornaments.

“When they come over, the first thing they do is run in and look at the tree and see how it’s doing,” Patricia Dreyfus said.

Added Hannah Vigil, Dreyfus’ 11-year-old granddaughter, “It’s really fun to go over at Christmastime. You remember all the ornaments. Each one has a story from a different place.”

Each year, the grandchildren are given a new ornament to place on the tree. Many of the ornaments have been collected by the Dreyfuses during their travels.

For years, it was Dreyfus’ children doing the decorating.

The family purchased the tree from a local nursery in 1980, the year it moved from Costa Mesa to Corona del Mar.

Back then, all five children still lived at home and the spruce was about 3 feet tall. Patricia and Gary Dreyfus could easily carry the tree in from the deck by themselves.

Now that the tree is more than 10-feet tall -- and raised another two feet by the pot in which it sits -- the couple relies on relatives for help.

Many in the family admit the spruce has seen better days. The bottom branches are missing, and the tree leans -- from a combination of old age and uneven ornament distribution.

“The bark is real rough,” Patricia Dreyfus said. “It has good days and it has bad days, just like the family.”

Added 9-year-old Colette Vigil, Hannah’s sister, “There are less and less branches every year.”

In the tree’s first two years, three children left home for UCLA. Susan Vigil said when she and her siblings came back during vacation, the spruce looked different.

“Our lives had changed dramatically, and so had our parents’, from having five kids at home to two kids,” Vigil said. “The tree took on a new shape. We like to think it was because of us.”

Last year, when Gary Dreyfus was sick, the tree suffered along with him, Patricia Dreyfus said.

“It was kind of sad looking,” she said. “We keep thinking it’s not going to make it any longer.”

But it does.

And each year, some of the Dreyfuses’ grandchildren spend the night at their house on New Year’s Eve, the night before the tree is taken back outside.

“We didn’t realize how long we’d use it for, and we don’t know how long it will last,” Patricia Dreyfus said.

20051221irtt60ncKENT TREPTOW / DAILY PILOT(LA)Gary and Patricia Dreyfus, seated, bought their tree in 1980; granddaughters Collete, left, and Hannah and daughter Susan Vigil still help decorate it.