Americans bought more than twice as many real Christmas trees last year as they did fake ones, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. That’s 25.9 million real ones versus 12.5 million fake.
On average real trees were less expensive, $50.82 each, than fake trees, $69.39, but in retail, volume is everything. The sale of real trees brought in a total of $1.32 billion in 2015, the fake ones, not so much (by comparison: $854 million) for a total revenue of approximately $2.2 billion.
Of those real trees, more than three-quarters were pre-cut.
- Pre-cut trees may be purchased at a variety of locations, including retail lots, garden centers, chain stores, Choose & Cut farms, nonprofit groups and over the Internet.
- "Cut my own" is a tree harvested by the consumer and purchased at a Choose & Cut farm, where it is grown by the farmer. Depending on your area, it may also be referred to as "U-Cut," "Choose & Cut," "U-Pick," "Choose & Harvest," etc.
The sale of both fake and real trees was down from 2014.