If you can believe it, the history of Christmas tree stands in New York City actually predates Christmas as a national holiday in the United States.
Christmas was not federally recognized until 1870, but New Yorkers were buying trees decades earlier. One of the earliest public Christmas tree markets in the nation appeared in the early 1850s at Washington Market on Manhattan’s west side, where a woodsman from the Catskills named Mark Carr hauled a few dozen trees into the city. He sold out in a day.
Before then, most New Yorkers did not have a Christmas tree at all. If you wanted one, you needed the time, money, and transportation to leave the city, which meant most people went without.
But as railroads expanded, trees poured in from the Catskills, New England, and Canada, turning Christmas trees into a seasonal industry.
Today, the sheds are temporary, but the people who run them often are not. Most stands were run by five families, sometimes jokingly referred to as the Christmas tree mafia, returning to the same corners generation after generation.
And thanks to a 1938 law known as the coniferous tree exception, Christmas trees are a rare New York City loophole. Vendors can sell them on sidewalks in December without a street vending license.
Then, seemingly overnight, the stands are gone, leaving behind a quiet sense that the season is over. But if your tree is still up in late January, we won’t tell anybody.