n the inky-blue hour before dawn, on the coldest day of winter, it is tempting to slide back under the bedcovers. But by 6 o’clock, everyone on the farm is up. It is delivery day.

After breakfast, Christian Morin and his wife, Doris Vargas-Mora, pull on their goat’s wool socks and felt-lined boots and head outside to the yard where the Christmas trees, all bundled in mesh, stand waiting in tidy rows.

Morin climbs onto his tractor and lifts the trees with a giant mechanical claw, setting them, layer upon layer, onto a flatbed trailer. When it’s this cold, hands and faces freeze no matter how bundled up they are in mitts, toques and balaclavas.

Morin’s customer in New York has ordered 900 Christmas trees from three feet to 12 feet tall, at $4 to $55 a piece, to be delivered December 1.

In a few weeks, the Balsam firs that Morin has tended for 15 years will be twinkling and shimmering in living rooms in Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen and the Bronx. He has other orders, too, from Massachusetts, New Jersey and other places. But it is the trees destined for New York City that make him most proud.

“I imagine my little trees over there on a busy Manhattan corner, all wide-eyed and proud amid the bright lights of the big city,” said Morin with a wide grin, allowing himself a moment’s whimsy at the height of his busiest day. “There is real prestige in going to New York.”

Quebec’s Balsam firs are famous far and wide. Some say they are the most beautiful Christmas trees in the world, celebrated for their bright green colour, and their feathery foliage. Best of all, people love their smell - the sweet, bracing aroma of the forest and of Christmas itself.

From the end of November until the middle of December, hundreds and hundreds of truckloads of Christmas trees cultivated in Quebec cross the border, destined for cities and towns all along the eastern seaboard, from Boston to New Jersey and New York and as far south as Washington and Miami. Others travel by freighter ship to Europe, the Middle East and far-off tropical places where people can only dream of a white Christmas.

Quebec exports more Christmas trees than anywhere else in Canada, followed by Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. It is a $15-million-a-year business for the 200 Quebec growers who make their living farming fir trees.

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Legend has it that the first Christmas tree in North America made its appearance in Sorel, Quebec, on Christmas Eve in 1781, when a German baroness living there hosted a party for British and German officers. She served English pudding and decorated a Balsam fir tree cut from the woods with fruit and lit candles. Two centuries later, her tree was commemorated on a 1981 Christmas stamp issued by Canada Post.

The first Christmas tree in North America is believed to have appeared at a party hosted by baroness Frederika von Riedesel in Sorel, Quebec in 1781. Illustration courtesy of Société historique Pierre-de-Saurel

Balsam firs make up large swaths of the boreal forest in Quebec. Their pointy spires are a familiar feature in the province’s topography. In the 1920s and 30s, American Christmas tree merchants hired bilingual agents in wooded regions such as the Eastern Townships, the Beauce and Bois-Francs to make deals with local farmers to buy up and cut down thousands of wild Christmas trees every year.

“Back then, nobody had ever heard of a cultivated tree that grew in rows like tomatoes or cucumbers. Christmas trees were wild things,” Morin recalled. “It was only in the 1970s that the Christmas tree farm came to be.”

Decorating the Christmas tree is a beloved holiday tradition. But nowadays, real trees are facing some stiff and shiny competition. Statistics Canada figures for 2012 show that real-tree revenues have been slipping for several years. Meanwhile, the total value of artificial Christmas trees imported to Canada, mostly from China, continues to rise. (The number stood at $49.5 million - up $2 million from 2011.) It’s a trend repeated across North America.

A survey by the Quebec government found that 60 per cent of people who put up a tree these days opt for an artificial one. They complain that the real thing is too messy, too much trouble. They say it is environmentally unfriendly. But Morin begs to differ. That argument, he says, is based on the mistaken belief that Christmas trees are still cut down in the wild, which they aren’t. Almost all the Christmas trees sold in North America now are grown on farms, each tree replaced by more trees when it is cut down.

A cluster of artificial trees gives holiday shoppers a jolt of colour at the entrance to Simons department store on Ste-Catherine St. W.

There’s another contender in the Christmas-tree popularity contest, too. Tree farmers in North and South Carolina have been planting more and more Fraser firs over the past 10 or 12 years. Though Balsams need the cold climate of Quebec to thrive, Frasers, which are native to the West Coast, can tolerate warmer weather. And their lush, green branches don’t lose their needles as readily as Balsams do.

Back in Ham-Nord, it is late afternoon and Morin and his wife and their crew from Mexico are just about finished loading the trees. A whole field of trees, their stumps painted red, white, blue and green to signify their size, has been stuffed into a rectangle the size of a city bus. Pressed and layered, they look like layers of spinach lasagna in an oversized casserole.

The Mexicans have been living on Morin’s farm since April, working for $10.50 an hour planting, weeding, pruning and cutting down Christmas trees, jobs that Morin says he can’t find Quebecers willing to do. Some of them will have set aside as much as $15,000 by the time they go home for Christmas. Some come back year after year, a few gravitate to the Christmas tree harvest to supplement their income once they have finished picking blueberries, apples, or potatoes at other farms across southern Quebec. Most of them will be back next April to remove the stumps of the cut-down trees, to turn the soil and plant more trees.

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The men are cold and tired. The Christmas tree harvest is intense. Trees can’t be cut too early; they must hold their needles and keep their colour until New Year’s Day at the very least. This year, the job was complicated by an early-November snowfall that made the paths between the rows impassible for the tractor. And then a sudden cold spell sent the temperature plunging to minus-12 degrees Celsius.

Foreman Sergio Martinez Ascenzio has already begun packing his suitcase. He can’t wait to get home to Mexico. His wife gave birth to a baby girl back in September, and she is waiting for Sergio to come home so that they can name their daughter together.

The work is finally done. The trailer is filled to the brim, the trees chained up. The rented truck will be here soon to hitch it up. After the driver has eaten and rested, he will travel through the night, passing the neighbouring towns of Notre-Dame-de-Ham, Chesterville and St.-Remi de Tingwick, then crossing the border into Vermont, heading for Harlem.

SLIDESHOW: Doris Vargas-Mora, the wife of Christian Morin, loads a tree into a truck in Ham Nord, Que., about 2 1/2 hours east of Montreal. The trees, approximately 900 of them, were later transported to New York City.

Mexican workers Jose Mizael Flores Neria, left, and Isidro Rodriguez Ayala pile balsam firs onto a trailer at Ideal Plantations in Ham Nord, Que.

Mexican worker Jorge Alfredo Alvarado Izaguirre takes a breather while working in -18°C weather.

Jorge Alfredo Alvarado Izaguirre prepares to attach a chain to the side of a trailer to secure Christmas trees for their trip to New York.

Jose Mizael Flores Neria, right, and Jorge Alfredo Alvarado Izaguirre secure the Christmas trees to a trailer.

In a few days he'll be back in sunny Mexico, but for now, crew foreman Sergio Martinez Ascenzio endures the cold.

Isidro Rodriguez Ayala waits for the next load of balsam fir Christmas trees to be hoisted by crane.

Almost done.

After five hours of work, the shipment is ready to go.