Fewer trees, fewer deals this Xmas In NYC, the fir isn't flying
Ouch tannenbaum! Fewer Christmas trees are for sale on the sidewalks of New York City this holiday season, and whether you are naughty or nice, they’re going to cost you more than in years past, vendors and experts say.
Reasons range from COVID-19 to the California wildfires.
Manhattan vendor SoHo Trees, which last year hawked the city’s most expensive Christmas conifer — $6,500 for a 20-foot Fraser fir — is sitting it out this season due to the pandemic.
“The safety of our customers and staff are of utmost importance to us. It is with a heavy heart to inform you that SoHo Trees will be taking a break from the 2020 holiday season,” reads a message on the vendor’s Web site.
David Neville, who manages NYC Tree Lady, which sells “handpicked” exotic trees, like Nordmann and Korean firs, for up to $1,000 at five locations in Manhattan, acknowledged, “There’s a lot less Christmas-tree stands in the city this year.”
Neville believes COVID-19 and the California wildfires caused a “ripple effect” that contributed to a tree shortage. The nationwide supply cannot satisfy demand, which means higher prices.
“There’s only a certain amount of 5- to 6-foot Christmas trees planted five years ago. A fire wipes those out. The next thing you know, the vendors are calling every farm in the country to try and fill their orders,” he said.
“All of the vendors that are selling Christmas trees this year purchased them 20 to 30 percent higher than they did last year.”
Neville also suspects that SoHo Trees and other vendors might also be taking 2020 off because a portion of their wealthy clientele were among those 300,000 New Yorkers who bolted the Big Apple over the last nine months.
Neville said there’s a market for the “smaller, cheaper” trees from North Carolina and Canada that he wishes he could sell in Chelsea, but they aren’t making it to the city.
“We would buy them in bulk, 1,000 at a time, and we’ve had a few of those loads canceled without explanation,” he said.
Hans Heep, 75, who lives in Greenwich Village, paid $75 for a “slim, but beautiful” 5-foot Fraser fir from Tree Riders NYC at St. Marks Church. Last year, a similar conifer cost him $28.
Erika Lee Sengstack, a managing partner at Tree Riders NYC, theorized that Canadian tree farmers who normally bring their wares down to sell in the city every holiday season are “less likely to sell trees this year if they are going to have a hard time getting back. It’s a hassle because of COVID.”
Canadian tree farmer Jimmy Downey, who is also a spokesman for the Canadian Christmas Tree Growers Association, said: “The market was very hard for the growers 10 years ago . . . We went from 300 growers to 100 growers in Quebec. People were planting a lot less trees, so we have a lot less now.”
A 52-year-old West Village woman lamented that her “go-to places” for Christmas trees weren’t in business this year and noticed that south of 14th Street, trees were more expensive than ever, with even “deli trees” going for more than $100.
But she sniffed out a deal on Sixth Avenue while walking her dog early one morning.
“I found a stand where a guy working the graveyard shift gave me a deal,” she said. “Sold me a $140 [6-foot balsam] tree for $80 cash!”
“We get a fresh tree every Christmas, and this year it felt particularly important because there’s been so much change and upheaval.”