NYC Christmas Tree Vendors Pleasantly Surprised By So Many Early Sales

For the five years that he has been living in New York, immigration attorney Joseph Greenwood has always gone home to London at the end of December to spend Christmas with his family. This year, due to the pandemic, he’s staying put.

Knowing he would be alone for the holiday, Greenwood decided to try to bring some cheer into his Williamsburg apartment by buying his own Christmas tree for the first time.

“Otherwise, how would I know it was Christmas?” he wondered. “Without having the Christmas tree, without having family around you, without having Christmas dinner, it would be just another day.”

Greenwood isn’t the only New Yorker hoping a tree will boost his spirits during the holiday season. Gothamist spoke to several Christmas tree vendors who said business had been swift early in the season this year, following a national trend. With fewer Christmas tree stands up around the city and the North American tree supply short overall, some vendors anticipate they will run out of trees well before Christmas eve.

“We’re actually going through our stock and we did not anticipate that the trees would be sold so early,” Miguel, a New York native who has been selling trees in Cobble Hill for 38 years, told Gothamist on December 8th. “Past this weekend, it will be hit or miss whether or not we have trees.”

Miguel said he usually gets the bulk of his trees from Canada, with local wholesalers supplementing his inventory. But this year, he was only able to get one of the two orders he requested from up north.

“I don’t think the [farms] can keep up with the demand throughout the country, so everybody has been cut on their orders,” he said. “We were cut one complete order, which is a tractor trailer carrying somewhere between 500 to 600 trees.”

Miguel said prices are somewhat higher this year, too, explaining that he’s passing on the cost from further up the supply chain. Pricing at his stand for the popular Fraser fir starts at about $85 for a 6 foot tree and goes up to $300 for a 10 foot tree.

Meric Shaun, whose stand is set up on East Houston and Essex streets in Manhattan, says he’s been coming down from upstate New York to sell trees for several years. He says he has noticed fewer Christmas tree stands this year, with many of the regular vendors missing. Despite less competition, he said, “We’re just trying to be as fair as we can” when it comes to prices.

Demand for Christmas trees in North America has been growing steadily over the past five years, already putting a strain on the tree supply, but demand has spiked even more than usual this year, says Shirley Brennan, executive director of the Canadian Christmas Tree Growers Association. She said the current tree supply has been diminished by the 2008 recession, when fewer trees were planted, as well as other factors, such as extreme weather in recent years.

“My office phone has been ringing since July with vendors in the U.S. looking for trees because, for whatever reason, their usual vendor hasn’t been able to supply them,” Brennan said.

Julian Tempesta, a Vermonter who is managing two Christmas tree stands in Brooklyn this year with his brother, says the Vermont farm he sources trees from has no problem with supply. But the brothers still ordered about 25% fewer trees than they normally would this year because they weren’t sure how COVID-19 would impact demand in New York.

“A lot of people moved away and we weren’t sure what people’s attitudes would be during the holidays,” Tempesta said. “We’re finding now that people are really eager to celebrate something and that makes perfect sense.”

Tempesta and his brother have made other adjustments because of the pandemic. The pair was hoping to open the stand that has operated for several years in the courtyard of Berg’n in Crown Heights, but that proved difficult to coordinate since the business closed due to COVID-19. Unlike other street vendors, Christmas tree vendors in New York City don’t have to get a license, but they do have to get permission from the owners of the store or building they’re selling in front of and often pay them a fee.

The brothers have been able to supplement sales by launching a website, VTtrees.com, allowing Brooklynites to order trees for delivery without venturing outside. For a 6-foot tree they're asking $56.

Karen Taylor, who came down from Vermont to sell trees at the stand Tempesta and his brother run at Christ Church on Clinton Street, says she’s met a lot of first time buyers.

“We started selling the Saturday after Thanksgiving and sold every tree on the lot by the next day, Sunday, a few hours before closing,” Taylor said, noting that there were 200 trees in that first batch. “People who would normally travel I think are staying home and buying trees, people who would normally buy their trees later are doing it much earlier, people who have never bought a tree...yeah, a lot of that.”

Still, Tempesta says, he’s not sure if his sales will be high overall this year or if people are just making their Christmas tree purchases early.

Either way, he says, he’s been impressed. “This season just shows what New York is all about,” Tempesta said. “People are dealing with a heavy situation and just kind of taking it in stride and celebrating what they can... It’s been a really great experience so far.”