That cheery tree rumor is fake news. Seriously, that story appeared in a posthumous biography of Washington. Parson Weems made the story up to embellish his book.
In 2004, I saw The Police in concert one evening at an Amphitheatre near the beach. A bus took people from the train station to the theatre and also picked up beachgoers to bring them back to the train station. As I was riding to the concert, some teenagers got on at the beach stop. One of them saw how crowded the bus was and asked, “Who’s appearing?” Someone replied, “The Police.” She then said, “Why? Are they expecting trouble?”
Not the best choice of font for the little kids.