Christmas Trees Are a Big Small Business | $1-billion market supplied by 15,000 small, family-owned businesses

“Growers and retailers are starting to put more options out on the market, It brings in people who wouldn’t have bought a live tree before.”

Christmas trees are small business as well. It takes more than 15,000 Christmas-tree farms to produce that annual harvest, most of them small, family-owned businesses with longstanding ties to their land.

Real Christmas trees outsell the artificial variety — most of which are made in China — by more than three to one.