Two anxieties, every year, in the same person.
If I buy it now, will it be dead by Christmas? If I wait, will there be anything left?
Sixteen seasons of answers.
A fresh tree lasts four to five weeks indoors
That is the number that settles the first anxiety. A Fraser fir that was cut recently, given a fresh cut across the trunk before it goes in water, and watered every single day, holds up four to five weeks in a heated apartment.
Count backward from Christmas. Anything from the weekend before Thanksgiving onward lands inside that window. Buy in late November and your tree is still green and holding on Christmas morning.
What kills a tree early is not time on your floor. It is the days between the mountain and your apartment, and then a dry stand in week two. Neither of those is about your calendar.
The best time to buy: opening weekend
Our first weekend is when the selection is complete. Every size, every shape, the tall ones, the slim ones for narrow rooms, the wide ones for a big parlor window.
By the second week, the most-wanted sizes are picked over. By mid-December, some sizes are gone entirely and are not coming back, because a tree that is not on the truck cannot be reordered. When our 7 to 8 footers sell out, they are out for the season.
We open Saturday, November 21, 2026 and sell through Christmas Eve, December 24. That is 34 days total.
Waiting does not save you money
We should be straight about this, since a lot of people plan around it: we do not run sales. No discount codes, no pre-season sale, no markdown week. The price on opening day is the price.
A short season and a truck full of trees we drove up from North Carolina ourselves is not a business where waiting is rewarded. If anything the opposite is true, because the good trees go first.
If you are buying for a lobby, a church, or an office
Order in October, or early November at the latest.
Large trees, over 9 feet, are the scarcest thing we sell and the hardest to source. Building and institutional orders also tend to come with a decorating date, a building schedule, and a COI to sort out. The lead time is not us being cautious, it is the actual constraint.
Call 646-470-6326 for anything over 13 feet. Those are quoted individually, and we can go up to 20 feet with advance notice.
If you like a late tree
Some people want the tree up on December 20 and that is a real tradition too. Come see us. There will be trees, they will be good ones, and there is nothing quite like the stand in the last week, when it is cold and lit up and half the neighborhood is out.
Just know that you are buying from what is left, not from everything.
What to do right now
Whatever month you are reading this in: get on our list. We send a few emails a year, and the first one tells you our opening date before it goes anywhere else.
Then come find us at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, 131 E 10th Street at 2nd Avenue, in the East Village. Sixteen seasons on the same corner.
Related: What size Christmas tree fits a New York City apartment?