On Christopher and Hudson in the West Village, two women named Millie and Mary sit in a red-and-green shed. Their door is wide open despite the freezing temperatures—mostly so anyone can poke their head in but also so they can write your Christmas wish on the front of it in blue Sharpie. (Current wishes include love, success, and Taylor Swift tickets.) But don’t get used to them. They’re only here for five weeks and for one reason: to sell Christmas trees.
Millie and Mary, who asked to be identified only by first names, drove down from Quebec, Canada, right after Thanksgiving. A tree farm company provided them with firs, their shed, and a baler. (Which, as it turns out, can be used more for just trees: Last night, two drunk men paid them $20 to be netted themselves.) Over the first few days, they decorated the stand, painting their shed and carving wooden ornaments that Millie tells me cost, well, whatever: “We tell people it’s in between a dollar and a million,” she says. Then she reveals her Christmas wish: “We’re hoping for a million,” she adds, laughing.
They also decorate themselves: Mary has pink gems across her teeth and often accessorizes with a colorful balaclava. Both try to wear either red or green each day, under pairs of Carhartt overalls. (Carhartt has recently seen a surge in popularity with celebrities—but its designs were originally conceived for railroad workers in the Gilded Age.) “We like having colorful items that we can mix and match to do a nice look,” she says.
On Christmas Eve, their job is done. That night, they’ll go do karaoke with some other tree sellers around their age, whom they met at 32nd and Third. “One of them is my new lover too,” Mollie says, full of joy. “We have lovers that are Christmas tree sellers!”
In 1851, a Catskills woodsman named Mark Carr recognized the growing popularity of Christmas trees in the United States; they had been introduced by German immigrants decades prior. So he loaded up his cart, parked it on the corner of Greenwich and Vesey streets, and sold his so-called mountain oddities to citizens of New York City. (The rent he paid to do so? $1.) By 1871, Christmas had been declared a national holiday, and Carr was just one of many tree salesmen in town.
Over the next 150 years, New York went from a trading port to a global metropolis—but the process of buying a Christmas tree stayed almost exactly the same. You don’t need any permits or special certificates from the state to sell trees. You just need permission from the landlord who owns the building you operate in front of. So every year in late November, hundreds of sellers still collect their mountain oddities of balsam and Fraser firs to quite literally set up shop in New York City…just like Carr did centuries ago.
They don’t have much time to make their money. Like milk, their product has a strict sell-by date: December 24. Some operators and their employees are native New Yorkers. But many hail from tree-lined lands north: Vermont, New Hampshire, or Quebec. Since renting an apartment isn’t logistically or financially feasible, they sleep in their vans or makeshift bunk beds they’ve built in their sheds. Several workers I spoke to seem to enjoy what’s colloquially known as van life: living in a motor vehicle full time or part-time. (Mollie and Mary, for example, met while hitchhiking.)
Others use the income to support a passion. “I sell Christmas trees so I can paint when I get home,” says Gabe Tempesta, as he gestures toward an oil painting that rests against a chain-link fence. Young children run around him as he pulls out balsam firs to show their parents, later brushing the needles off his green wool sweater and vintage Carhartt pants. (He buys them on eBay: Carhartt in the ’90s, he tells me, was just made better.)
Tempesta has done this job for around 13 years. At first, he was just helping the owner of a Vermont Christmas tree farm sell his stock. But now the owner is retiring. Tempesta is taking over his lots and growing his own trees up north. Once his trees reach maturity—in 8 to 10 years—he’ll be a one-stop tree shop.
Tempesta is just one of many tree salesmen who have been in New York for a decade or more. Vermont-based entrepreneur Billy Romp and his family have had a stand on Jane Street and Eighth Avenue for 35 years. They’re now beloved New York holiday figures: In 1998, Romp published a memoir, Christmas on Jane Street, and went on Good Morning America to promote it.
Then there’s Greg Walsh. On a 30-degree December Saturday, I stand outside his trailer at the Greenwood Park Beer Garden as he asks me what Santa hat I prefer. It’s not really a question because within half a second he answers it himself: He’s going to wear his old one, with the frayed rim and ragged pom-pom.
The hat’s got character, as does Walsh, who has spent much of his life embodying a real-life Santa Claus who sells balsams, Frasers, Nordmanns, and nobles (the Cadillac of Christmas trees, according to Walsh). Born and raised in Woodside, Queens, he got into the tree trade on a whim: One summer day, when he was 18, he noticed a fruit seller outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan. He asked him how he got the job. The stall attendant introduced him to his boss, who hired him on the spot. Soon enough they became partners—and switched to selling Christmas trees when demand for fruit cooled in the colder months. Thirty-five years later, he runs seven locations around the city (six in Brooklyn, one in Manhattan) under the banner of Greg’s Trees.
On the night I visit, he’s having a tree-lighting ceremony for anyone and everyone who stops by. There’s a wreath-making station, plenty of candy, and a giant throne where kids can take pictures with Santa. In past years, that was Walsh. But not this time. He’s currently going through chemotherapy and feared his beard wouldn’t be long enough. So a friend will play the big man instead, and he’ll attend in his Santa hat, red sweatshirt, and New York Jets joggers. (His dental assistant kindly volunteered to be an elf.)
We ask him to sit on the throne for a portrait. Walsh obliges, telling us a colorful story about how he acquired it from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Afterward, I wish him luck with his treatment. “Life is short for all of us,” he says. Then he turns into his trees, bellowing a hearty “ho ho ho” as he goes.
