Did you buy your Christmas tree this year? Where is it from?

Do you have your Christmas tree yet? When I was young, getting our Christmas tree was kind of an interesting process. Dad would be the one to pick out the tree. I don't ever remember traveling with dad to go find the tree, but I do remember him coming home with more than one. He wanted the perfect Christmas tree, and he didn't think one tree would do it. So, he would buy 2 trees, use one as the central tree and the other tree would be the donor tree. He would remove branches and then graft them into the central tree. (I know it sounds like a lot of work.) 

I will say this, we always had an awesome tree. It looked amazing. 

When I was a parent, I remember going out to get the tree a few times. We even went up into the mountains and cut a tree one year but more often than not, we went to a Christmas tree vendor. 

These days as I'm driving through town, I look at the Christmas tree vendors that are set up and I wonder to myself, where do those trees come from?  

Wow, after doing a little cruising around on the Internet, I stumbled across some very interesting information about Christmas trees and where they come from. 

According to axios.com,
‘Nearly a million Christmas trees were grown and cut in Washington in 2022, making the Evergreen State the nation's fourth-highest producer of Christmas trees that year, according to the most recent federal data available.’ 

Admittedly, that is a lot of trees, but it doesn't even come close to what the number one Christmas tree state puts out on a yearly basis. Oregon is the number one grower of Christmas trees in the United States with 4.8 million Christmas trees cut and that's from 2022. The number 2 Christmas tree producer for 2022 was North Carolina with 3.2 million trees. Number 3 was the great state of Michigan with 1.8 million trees. Washington state comes in at number 4. 

You might think that growing and cutting Christmas trees is wasteful and not environmentally friendly but that is not the case. NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information says, “real Christmas trees are recyclable, making them a zero-waste product” 

So, if you haven't got your Christmas tree yet. Don't take the one out-of-the-box that's in your attic. Go out and find a beautiful Christmas tree at one of the Christmas tree lots in your town. 

And if you're like my dad, you know that two good Christmas trees will make one great Christmas tree. 

Washington state is a top grower of Christmas trees in the U.S. - Axios Seattle
The Christmas tree value play
2022-census-of-agriculture-table-35.pdf