Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree

During the Christmas season of 2003, author Gloria Houston gave the rights to her award-winning children’s book, The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree, to the small town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

From that original idea, the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree project was born. With entrepreneurial development for Mitchell County as a primary focus, the project has created 80 individual small businesses that produce quality, handmade products as part of the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree collection.

In 2005, the Mitchell County Development Foundation leased and renovated a retail facility on Oak Street in downtown Spruce Pine for the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree store.

The Foundation formed a Product Review Committee composed of highly qualified crafts people to designate product quality standards, and conducted calls to artists for handcrafted products to be licensed as Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree merchandise. The calls were answered, and the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree collection now features over 300 high quality products by nearly 80 product makers from eight mountain counties.

The project also serves as a scholarship tool, with a portion of royalties received from product sales used to fund a scholarship program to combat the alarmingly low student retention rate at Mitchell High School, the only high school in the county.

Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree Store
262 Oak Street
Spruce Pine, NC 28777
828-765-0571
www.homeoftheperfectchristmastree.org