Casey Opstad's Christmas tree, decorated with 162 traffic cones, in Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York, in early December 2025. GEORGIA HUSSON FOR LE MONDE
On 59th Street in Manhattan, right in front of the walls of Saint-Paul's Church, sprawled the seasonal empire of a lumberjack. The stand took up the entire street: two rows of perfectly aligned Christmas trees, a few animals carved out of wood, a life-size Saint Nicholas and a reindeer made of painted resin. Searching for my first American Christmas tree, I knocked on the door of the small cabin where the seller had taken shelter, munching on chips beside a portable heater. "Kelly," he introduced himself. The man looked nothing like a lumberjack: He was from Miami... A Floridian sent to sell Christmas trees just steps from Central Park? The economic geography of this country truly knows no bounds.
Kelly explained to me that he was helping a friend "top up [his] retirement," then, with the pride of someone who has survived a tropical storm in flip-flops, he showed me the 140 Christmas trees surrounding him: Straight Fraser firs, hardy Nordmanns and aromatic Balsams. All of them came from North Carolina, and their prices ranged from $150 to $300. "That's the normal price," he assured me. "My wife checked out all the competitors."
