On Sunday morning I opened my local newspaper to see a story of how an Oregon family takes hundreds of Pacific Northwest trees to Hollywood every year, where even bad trees go for $150 but their perfect ones can fetch $400 or more. Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, tales of Christmas trees from Vermont sold in Brooklyn for similarly outrageous prices -- most trees go for $10 to 20 a foot in New York City. The same trees in Vermont range from $20 to $55, total.

Sunday afternoon my family and I went Christmas tree shopping in our own neighborhood, in Southeast Portland, Ore. We took the wagon and found the price range at the "expensive" Boy Scout lot was $30 to $60, with a fabulously full seven-foot fir going home in the Red Flyer for $39. My four-year-old declared it "perfect" and "beautiful" at first sight and my purchase slid under the $40 quick cash I'd gotten from the ATM.

Christmas tree prices don't make the Consumer Price Index, and as far as I know they aren't tracked in anyone's livability indices. But I wonder if that's not one of those secrets of livable places: well-priced local Christmas trees. It's both a measure of economy (there's lots left over for Christmas presents and butter for those Christmas cookies in my world) and livability (I feel happy to have supported a local farmer, a Boy Scout troop, and not broken my bank in the process). It's why even the apartment building windows frame big Oregon firs in my neighborhood. It's why every Subaru we saw on the streets this weekend was bedecked by an eight-foot tree on its way home to someone's living room.

Reasonable prices on live Christmas trees help make the season bright in Burlington and in Portland. How do the Christmas tree prices affect your town?