iniature forests have popped up all over New York City, on street corners and slices of sidewalk, up against buildings and along park fences.
In the middle of the night, right after American Thanksgiving, red and green painted tree sellers’ cabins appear, tucked among rows of evergreen trees under strings of twinkly lights. Suddenly, it’s Christmas in the Big Apple.
For years, Quebecers have come to New York City at Christmas,
says Michel Tremblay, a part-time Cegep teacher and tour guide who has sold
trees in New York for the last four Decembers.
For these six weeks, the tree sellers are well-loved fixtures in neighbourhoods across New York City, the surest sign that Christmas is coming and the closest some city dwellers ever get to a forest. Even if they aren’t buying, passersby stop to smell the branches or practice their French.
Yesterday afternoon, a woman from an apartment building down the street brought them a casserole of stuffed peppers hot out of her oven. On cold days, people out for a run or to walk the dog stop with hot chocolate, coffee and muffins.
New Yorkers love the Quebec mystique. Once a customer asked Tremblay to spin a white lie and tell his little girl that the French Canadians live in the forest far up north and cut the trees themselves.
“They like our music, our accents and our lumberjack style,” Tremblay says. “People are always so happy to see us.”
Most of the trees that shine in New Yorkers’ apartments at Christmas come from Quebec. They are Balsam and Fraser firs that sell for as much as $250, grown on tree farms in the Eastern Townships, the Beauce and Bois-Francs.
They work around the clock, taking turns sleeping, showering in nearby gyms and snacking on the run until it is time to pack up and head home on the morning of December 25.
The truth is, he does get cold and tired and by the end of it all he’s grumpy and ready to go home. For now, though, he’s still into it, wearing multiple layers and making sure not to drink too much so he doesn’t have to venture often to the nearest toilet in the shop at the corner. He jacks up the Christmas music to keep things lively and heads straight to the apartment for a good night’s sleep when he finishes work at 10 p.m. , handing the overnight watch to somebody else.
George Nash and Jane Waterman are a couple of farmers from Vermont who have been running a network of 17 Christmas tree stands in Harlem, the Upper West Side, Hell’s Kitchen and the Bronx for 39 years. Fragnito and the other seasonal workers they hire to sell 14,000 trees purchased from Quebec, Nova Scotia and North Carolina are a strange and interesting breed, Nash says. The current crew of 40 features farmers, musicians, artists, students and filmmakers from as far away as Germany, Sweden, Argentina and the Czech Republic.
They work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week for six weeks, raking in $7,500 or more in a single season.
“And then they get what we call tree fever, which keeps them coming back year after year for the chance to be part of the streetscape in this amazing city. It’s an experience you could never replicate as an ordinary tourist.”
She’s walking up and down the block, pulling out trees for families to look at, twirling them around to show them from all angles. Like a character in a Christmas movie set in New York, she never stops talking or smiling and everybody who walks by seems to know her and love her.
Molly Hatfield, George and Jane’s 40-year-old daughter, has spent every December at her parents’ tree stand at the corner of 110th St. and Broadway since she was 19 years old. At first, she lived in a camper trailer on the street, but now her parents sublease apartments on Craigslist for their workers to live in.
