Family after family wander between rows of pine and cypress trees. Parents inspect price tags and shapes, imagining how their stars and ornaments might look. Children run through the cool December air and toddlers bounce along in wagons as they all search for the perfect tree to cut down and take home for the holidays.
Jeffery Seiler’s family has run this 15-acre Christmas tree farm near Seguin for more than 40 years. He took over full-time from his father in 2001 and sees many of the same families come year after year.
“I have a lot of repeat customers. People have been coming here a long time,” Seiler said.
Christmas trees have been grown commercially at farms in Texas for decades, but industry experts say the supply of Texas-grown trees has exploded since 2020.
Texas added 100 new Christmas tree farms between 2017 and 2022, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The acreage of Christmas tree farms nearly quadrupled in that time.
There are several farms in the San Antonio area.
A lot of that growth had to do with the pandemic, said Frank Raley. He leads Texas A&M’s Forest Service tree improvement and nurseries department and said Christmas tree growers benefited in 2020.
Families were eager to go outdoors and cut down their own Christmas trees at local choose-and-cut farms during the pandemic, Raley said. That trend has stuck.
“It really blossomed during COVID,” he said, adding that some farms have added other holiday activities like Christmas photos and sleigh rides to bring in customers.
It’s been consistent, despite challenges from droughts. Seiler plants around 2,000 trees a year and opens the day after Thanksgiving.
Christmas tree growers and retailers are laser-focused on maintaining this new popularity and competing against the artificial tree market.
“Buying live Christmas trees in our industry is a plus,” said Stan Reed, executive secretary of the Texas Christmas Tree Growers Association. “The competition is between live Christmas trees and artificial trees.”
Origins of Texas Christmas trees
Texas-grown Christmas trees don’t originally come from Texas.
Raley said researchers at Texas A&M have been working with the Virginia Pine since the 1980s. They provide Texas tree growers with seeds and work together to breed more adaptable trees.
He said researchers have bred trees for adaptability and shape, trying to get trees with the right branch distribution and strength.
“Most of the farms are in East Texas, ranging from Texarkana to Houston,” Raley said. “Between the soils and the climate, those conditions are perfect.”
Seiler grows a lot of Virginia Pines, along with the Lob Lolly, a native Texan tree, and Leyland and Carolina Sapphire cypress trees.
The Virginia Pine has been around so long, Raley added, that it’s now considered a landrace. That means it’s not native, but it’s adapted to the Texas environment.
“They’ll stand a drought,” Raley said. “They don’t do well in wet conditions.”
Farmers can grow a six- to eight-foot tree in around five years, Raley said, and replant after every holiday season in anticipation of Christmases that won’t take place for years.
That means farmers have to balance this year’s demand with growth for future years.
“I still see trees out there, but I might save them for next year,” Seiler said when surveying his farm.
What kind of trees are sold at commercial lots?
You might not see one of those trees at Christmas tree lots in San Antonio. That’s because most Texas-grown Christmas trees are choose-and-cut. Many trees at local lots are from wholesalers in other parts of the country. Nearly 4 million trees were harvested in Oregon in 2022, for example.
If you’re buying a Christmas tree in San Antonio, it might be coming from Oregon’s McKenzie Farms.
Jim Donohue owns Holiday Hills Christmas Trees, which has 12 locations throughout South Texas, including in New Braunfels, Boerne and now downtown San Antonio.
Every year, he brings in thousands of trees from the Pacific Northwest. Trees are packed into refrigerated trucks filled with 1,500 pounds of ice to keep them fresh until January, Donohue said.
Many of those are fir trees and take longer to grow — seven to nine years for Douglas Firs and up to 12 years for Noble Firs, which Donohue called the Cadillac of Christmas trees.
Donohue said large farms like McKenzie also noticed an increase in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wholesale Christmas tree farms in the Pacific Northwest have an oversupply now because of that bump in demand, he added.
“We’ve actually dropped our prices this year because there’s such an oversupply in the Pacific Northwest,” Donohue said. “Customers are noticing that at the lot level.”
Buying live
Reed and the Texas Christmas Tree Growers’ Association see the two options for live trees — buying choose-and-cut and heading to your local Christmas tree retail lot — as different markets. But competition between those two options isn’t as important as competition with artificial Christmas trees, he said.
Donohue also talks up the importance of live Christmas trees. That’s why he was willing to drop his prices this year.
“For me, the tradition is more important,” he said. “Selling a real Christmas tree is more important than earning an extra $2.”
Donohue is optimistic that live trees will be more competitive in the market this year. A vast majority of artificial Christmas trees are made overseas — 85% are made in China, according to the National Christmas Tree Association — and now are subject to tariffs.
Live Christmas trees are also more environmentally friendly. They use less plastic than artificial trees.
If Texans want live trees, though, they’ll have to move quickly. Seiler tells customers that most of his biggest trees are already gone. Last year, he closed up shop after the second week of December. This year could be even sooner.
That’s a trend across Texas, Reed added.
“If you wait until the second week in December, you might not get anything,” Reed said.
