Outlook for Real Christmas Trees Ahead of 2025 Holiday

Like it or not, you’re going to start hearing people talk about Christmas very, very soon. Sure, Halloween and Thanksgiving haven’t arrived yet for 2025, but that doesn’t mean Walmarts, Dollar Generals, and other discount retailers aren’t carving out a sizable section of their stores for everything wintery and wonderlandy.

And the centerpiece of the seasonal festivities is a Christmas tree. For agriculture, that means supporting growers and getting your hands on a live, real tree.

With so many changes in agricultural pricing, inputs, and market availability this year, the Real Christmas Tree Board has revealed the results of its annual wholesale grower survey, hoping to pinpoint some of the trends that we can expect in the coming weeks.

The two major findings are:

• Prices are staying steady: Of the wholesale growers surveyed, 84 percent said they do not plan to raise wholesale prices for the upcoming season, including those who may lower prices.
• Plenty of trees to go around: Nearly 8 in 10 growers (79 percent) expect to sell the same number of trees or more compared to last year, with 32 percent saying they expect to sell more trees in 2025 than they did in 2024.

“Growers are prepared, supply is strong, and most are holding wholesale prices steady this year,” said Marsha Gray, Executive Director of the Real Christmas Tree Board. “This reflects the consistency of the real Christmas tree industry and the commitment of growers to ensuring that there’s a real Christmas tree for everyone who wants one.”

Christmas trees are considered a highly sustainable commodity. Unlike the images you may be apt to conjure of clear-cut forests, Christmas trees are not yanked from pristine woodlands. Instead, they are grown on farms — over 350,000 acres of farmland in the United States alone. These farms operate like any other crop system, with one notable difference: Each harvested tree is replaced with 1 to 3 new saplings.

The most common species used for Christmas trees are Scotch pine, balsam fir, Norway spruce, white fir, Colorado blue spruce, white pine, Fraser fir, Canaan fir, noble fir, and Douglas fir. 

The price that a consumer will pay for a real Christmas tree varies and is set by retailers. While the Real Christmas Tree Board is unable to provide the average cost of a tree, in a consumer survey last year, 90 percent of respondents who purchased a real Christmas tree said the price they paid was worth it.

As an agricultural commodity under the USMCA, Canadian-produced real Christmas trees are currently exempt from tariffs. 

Real Christmas trees are easy to find at seasonal lots, choose and cut farms, big box stores, and garden centers nationwide. During the 2024 holiday season, 91 percent of those surveyed said they had no issue locating a place nearby to purchase a tree, and 89 percent found the tree they wanted at the first place they went.