U.S. tree farms cut 14.5 million Christmas trees in 2022, the most-recent year USDA data was available. There are more than 300 million Christmas trees growing on the approximately 15,000 farms in the U.S., according to the National Christmas Tree Association, an industry trade group.

Michigan, North Carolina and Oregon have the most land devoted to Christmas tree farms. These farms nationwide cover more than 400 square miles of land — a little less than half Rhode Island’s land area — according to the latest USDA data.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/us-christmas-tree-farm-map-rcna247251

Posted by nbcnews

31 Comments

  1. I’d say that depends highly on where you are. In New England, I’d wager almost none of the Christmas trees come from any of those three states.

  2. tuesdaytraveler on

    Mine came from Kmart. Still works. Don’t know what Kmart is? It’s like Walmart but with milkshakes and blue light specials. #XGen

  3. To be fair, in Alaska you just go out on state lands and cut your own down. Your chart doesn’t account for things like that, just commercial suppliers.

  4. LurkersUniteAgain on

    >cover more than 400 square miles of land — a little less than half Rhode Island’s land area 

    do youj mean a little less than a third? because rhode island is 1545 sq mi

  5. slouchingtoepiphany on

    A lot of them were once from Canada, but we know what happened to that, Trump is the Grinch who stole Christmas.

  6. Soviet_Russia321 on

    I remember hiking around the mountains of NC and finding those Christmas tree farms. I figured all mountainous areas had some kind of setup to supply the local area. Had no idea I was amidst a downright *christmas hotspot*

  7. This just brought me back to my kid years when we would make a whole day out of visiting one of the local Christmas tree farms. Perusing up and down all the rows of trees until we found the perfect one, reaching into the tree to hold onto it while my dad cut it down, getting a bunch of needles and sap on my coat and gloves in the process, sipping hot chocolate in the barn while they tied the tree to the roof of the car, then finally getting to set it up at home and find out how badly we estimated the dimensions to fit in our living room corner lol. Ahh, simpler times.

  8. I live in North Carolina and we used to have a Christmas Tree store that would stay open all year round! I always thought how unsustainable that must be but then I learned that we have an abundance of trees in NC.

  9. That’s 2022 data; how true will that be after Helene devastated Ashe county? I remember last year hearing that it had a huge impact on the Christmas tree farms that will take years to recover just on a production level

  10. Parking-Inevitable19 on

    Ours came from Costco. It’s stored in a box. Much easier to deal with and the longer you keep it the cheaper it gets.

  11. Here in Washington and western states you can buy a permit and cut one down from national forest lands for $5-$10

  12. When I was in 2nd grade, my elementary school was half a mile from a Christmas tree farm (Salem, Oregon). We made handmade tags and attached them to outgoing trees, asking the buyer to return a postcard indicating where they bought their tree. We tracked all the responses on a big US map in the hallway. It was stunning to see how many places and how far away were getting Oregon Christmas trees.

  13. Odds are a lot better that mine came from the Christmas tree farm in Vermont where I cut it down myself

  14. Saw a few semis hauling Christmas trees down 75 as I drove to northern Michigan a few weeks ago.

  15. I grew up in one of the dark green counties in New York State. My house had a large and empty back lot. Some guy came to my father and offered to plant Christmas trees there, and then after X many years, he would harvest the trees and split the profits 50-50. My father agreed, and the guy planted to trees. Unfortunately, trees only grew in one corner on the lot… maybe a dozen out trees out of 250. The guy never came back and those remaining trees are still there, all grown now.

  16. No I kinda doubt they send all that many over the Atlantic. Finland has enough trees without US imports. Kind of one of our main industries.

  17. I grew up in rural Northern Michigan and one of my first jobs was trimming Christmas trees for a tree farm. They actually gave a bunch of 14-year olds machetes to trim the trees with. It was great! A decade later I was going to grad school in Lubbock, Texas and we went to a tree lot at the local Furr’s store. Found trees being sold there from the same farm in Michigan I had worked at. We inspected the tree we picked out carefully – this batch could have been from the fields I trimmed and a lot of my first trees weren’t very round – maybe a bit triangular. But they fit closer into the corner that way 😉

  18. thegreatjamoco on

    In my old job, I would have to inspect Xmas trees/boughs and would wince every time it came from NC. Like half the shipments had Elongated Hemlock Scale and we’d have to order them destroyed.