Keep your Christmas tree happy and healthy this holiday season


Keep your Christmas tree happy and healthy this holiday season

03:13

If you haven't bought a Christmas tree yet this year, cheer up – prices are about the same as in 2023.

Producers did not expect wholesale prices to rise, according to annual report survey Sponsored by the Real Christmas Tree Board, based in Howell, Michigan, and by annual fees paid by growers and importers.

“It's very similar to last year. From what we're hearing, wholesalers are maintaining their prices,” Jill Sidebottom, spokeswoman for the National Christmas Tree Association, a trade group that advocates for the tree industry, told CBS MoneyWatch.

According to the group, for consumers, the price of Christmas trees this holiday season will average around $80, compared to $75 in 2023, and that's in line with last year's figures.

“Since COVID, thankfully the demand has been very high, and we appreciate that families are still planting real trees. The alternative is plastic, and that's not good for the environment,” said the owner of Angevine Farms in Warren. Lisa Angevine-Burgess, Connecticut, and executive director of the Connecticut Christmas Tree Growers told CBS MoneyWatch.

“The closer you get to the city, the more expensive it is,” he said.

Christmas tree prices have increased over the past 15 years due to reduced supply.

“The original tight supply dates back to 2008, when there was an oversupply and growers stopped planting a lot,” Sidebottom said. He said it takes up to a decade to grow a tree. Extreme weather, including the 2021 heat dome, also killed a lot of trees in the Pacific Northwest, he said.


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Christmas trees are grown in every U.S. state, with the largest production in Oregon, North Carolina, and Michigan. Trees are also imported from Canada, including a variety of Douglas fir imported from British Columbia.

Drought conditions have occurred in parts of the country in recent months, resulting in wildfires in parts of the East Coast and potentially causing sleepless nights for tree farmers as the Roots that weren't properly hydrated in the fall won't be able to do this.

“We were very concerned that it would affect the trees this year. Thankfully, we haven't seen any problems,” Angwin-Berges said. “We started cutting down some trees early just to see, and in November we started to realize that this year's trees weren't going to be affected – taller trees have deeper roots.”

It typically takes about eight years to grow an 8-foot tree now in time for the Christmas holidays; white cedar, for example, grows faster and white cedar and spruce trees take longer.

“There's about a foot of growth every year, so you're sitting on your money for a long time,” Sidebottom said of the investments made by growers.

As the holiday shopping season approaches, Americans have stepped up their Christmas tree purchasing season. According to the survey of 1,499 adults conducted in August and September last year, one-third of Americans purchased their Christmas trees during the week after Thanksgiving and another 33% did so during the first week of December.


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Another 16% purchased their tree in the second week of December; 14% claimed a tree before Thanksgiving; The survey found that 3% in the third week of December and only 1% on Christmas Eve.

“This trend now goes back even before Thanksgiving,” Angwin-Berges said.

In past decades, “we never sold trees before Thanksgiving,” said Angwin-Berg of her nearly 50-acre farm, which has been in the family for 156 years and has been selling Christmas trees since 1960. “As a kid, we were always busy on Christmas Eve, and now you're not necessarily open. A lot of farms have already been sold, and there are a lot of farms that have already been sold and closed. Are done.”

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