It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and Americans have started decorating their homes. While for some, this means taking the boxed Christmas tree out of the attic and dusting it off, for others it means a live tree and the scent of evergreen or pine for the holidays.
Some tree enthusiasts will therefore be going to live tree farms to buy their Christmas centerpiece and a rarer few will be trekking off into the woods with a chainsaw or an axe.
How many folks are still participating in this tradition?
BetVirginia.com decided to take a break from Virginia sports betting to rank each state based on their interest in bringing home a live Christmas tree.
States Most/Least Interested in Real Christmas Trees
Virginia Cracks Top 10
According to our research, the No. 1 state where you’re likely to find a live Christmas tree is Delaware, which is small enough everyone can probably shop at the same tree farm.
At No. 2 is New Hampshire, which makes sense since virtually every resident has a tree in their yard.
New Hampshire is followed by Louisiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Alabama and then No. 9, Virginia.
Rounding out the Top 10 is the highest-ranked southwestern state, New Mexico.
So how did this Christmas tree trend get started? It may go back to the 1400s in Livonia (now Estonia and Latvia), but the credit usually goes to 16th century German Lutherans and Martin Luther, who allegedly added lighted candles to a tree before anyone could warn him what a fire hazard that was.
Public Christmas trees started appearing in the U.S. in the 1900s, with the National Christmas Tree at the White House and the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree in midtown Manhattan.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the largest Christmas tree in America was credited to Lantana, Florida, and put up by the National Enquirer.
Christmas trees are also big business, as Americans spend over $2 billion on live trees each year.
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Methodology
BetVirginia.com utilized Google Trends to look at the search volume for the queries “real Christmas trees near me” and “live Christmas trees near me” for the dates between the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve in 2020, 2021, and 2022 (for 2022, we utilized the range of dates between the day after Thanksgiving and December 1st). After gathering that data, BetVirginia.com ranked the interest of the states based on the average search volume.
