New York has always been ahead of the nation with most trends so it comes as no surprise that the same was true with Christmas trees. Since the Christmas tree was a pre-Christian Germanic ritual, it was a part of few Americans' celebrations of the holiday. In fact, compared to Easter, Christmas was a relatively unimportant holiday for most American Christians. It wouldn't even become a national holiday until 1870. However, New York's past as a Dutch colony meant that both Christmas and the Christmas tree already had a part in the seasonal tradition.

It was the mass immigration from the German principalities that began to popularize the tradition beyond the New York Knickerbockers. But while the demand grew for Christmas trees, the supply wasn't there. Having a Christmas Tree involved, well, getting a Christmas Tree. To procure a proper evergreen in the early 19th century meant you had to have access to a wagon or pay someone to go upstate and cut a tree. "The Jolly Woodsman," Mark Carr would change all that.

Mark Carr wasn't one for celebrating Christmas, but he had no aversion to making money. He realized that if he brought Christmas trees to the city, there would be plenty of people willing to buy them. So in 1851, he and his sons chopped down some evergreens, put them on a ferry, and rented space in front of the Washington Market. He sold out within the day.

Carr realized that he had struck upon a goldmine and quickly went back to fetch more. It became a family business with his sons still selling Christmas trees fifty years later. Soon, others quickly caught on and the city began to be flooded by Christmas Tree markets (most near the Hudson where the trees could be easily transported to from barges.)

In 1855, there had been no commercial Christmas tree markets. By the 1880s, there would be hundreds of thousands of trees sold on New York's streets. Alongside the trees, garlands, wreaths, and other accouterments were sold. The selling was competitive: Christmas tree dealers bribed, tipped, and cajoled for the best placement.

At that time, the trees would sell for around ten dollars, making their transport a fairly profitable endeavor. Initially, the Hudson tree markets dominated the sale of trees, however, the deterioration of the waterfront began to make those areas less attractive to consumers. Tree dealers began to set up their stands throughout the city.

Moreover, there was no permit or license needed to sell Christmas trees (nor anything else for that matter.) During Mayor LaGuardia's war on pushcarts, LaGuardia fought for the Christmas Tree sellers to be regulated. However, he was faced by vigorous public opposition. In 1938, the City Council passed the "coniferous tree exception" that allows anyone to sell Christmas trees during the month of December as long as they leave space for pedestrians and receive approval from nearby businesses. The exception persists to this day.

Since the 1880s, trade has hardly decreased. An estimated 25-30 million trees were sold in the United States last year. Moreover, accounting for inflation, Christmas trees have only gotten cheaper! Modern trees cost considerably less than their 1880s counterparts.

Nowadays trees come from a little further afield, many are harvested in Canada and shipped down. No longer brought in by barges, Douglas fir, balsam fir, black spruce, red cedar, Scotch pine, and other evergreens are trucked into the city.

Come December, in what a 1960 New York Times article dubbed "the Month of Glory", the trees will be sold as they always have: piled on street corners and sidewalks.