Country Loving Christmas Tree Farm in Leesburg, Virginia usually begins selling trees on Black Friday, but this year it opened early by popular demand.
“People just started calling and calling and calling, ‘Please can I come get a tree now?'” says owner Ricky Hoybach. The weather was nice, and Hoybach began welcoming customers the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
Hoybach says the farm, where customers can cut their own trees (and pick from a small selection of pre-cut trees), sells about 500 trees in an average season that ends on Christmas Eve. This year, he’d sold that many by Sunday evening.
“We might have to close early this year,” he says. “We might just be sold out.”
Hoybach is among a number of Christmas tree purveyors in the D.C. area who have seen increased demand this year. He attributes the surge to customers being “in a rush to get 2020 over with.”
“They need Christmas now more than ever,” he says. “They’re just fed up and worn out after the election, and just exhausted from lockdowns and the constant news cycles and they’re ready for a break.”
He says he’s also seen more first-time buyers than usual. How does he know they’re fir newbies? The skyrocketing demand for tree stands. “Usually you buy a stand the first time, and then you use it for years and years,” he says. “So, we sold more stands than we’ve ever done before.”
Hoybach also says better weather means better sales, and a recent run of nice days played a role.
Hugh Rodell, owner of North Star Christmas Trees, says his four regional locations have seen at least a 30% increase in sales as compared with the same time in past years.
“It was our largest Thanksgiving weekend – that’s the weekend after Thanksgiving – that we’ve had in the company,” says Rodell. He thinks the uptick is due to a combination of factors.
He says that as people are spending more time at home during the health crisis. “What I’m hearing is that, you know, ‘We just want to decorate the house.’ Maybe it’s something to be a little more excited about, I guess, something positive in your day.”
Rodell also notes that supply for trees has been tighter over the past couple years, stemming from the Great Recession when farmers planted fewer trees. He says that has prompted more people to buy their trees sooner rather than later.
“The consumer knew to get their tree and get it early,” Rodell says, “because they may have experienced something over the last two years of not having the best selection.”
Across the country, purveyors have reported a boost in business, and some sellers in the region are already calling it quits. Modlin’s Tree Farm in Lothian, Maryland, posted on Facebook Thursday that it was closing for the season “due to the short availably of trees left.”
“We were absolutely blown away by how quickly we sold out this year,” the post read.
Hoybach says, as a business owner, it’s come as a pleasant surprise during a challenging time. “It’s the one bright spot in this whole year,” he says.
