Seasonal vendors bring Christmas trees to the sidewalks of New York City

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• John Yang:

  Every year, the smell of spruce around New York City announces the arrival of as many as 200,000 Christmas trees. The seasonal workers who sell trees often live on site in trailers, vans, even plywood shacks. We talked with one group of Christmas tree sellers at their sidewalk market in Brooklyn.

• Woman:

  I want the sun for Christmas.

• Greg Walsh, Owner, Greg’s Trees:

  The sun out of the sky. Okay. Will you share, though? Can you share with the rest of us?

• Woman:

  No, no.

• Greg Walsh:

  My name is Gregory Walsh. I'm called Big Greg. I grew up here in New York and we sell Christmas trees. We've been doing it for about 40 years. I always think it's a lot of fun, to be honest. I'm also Santa Claus.

  As I was leaving last year, they were saying, he's the real one, not fake one. He's the real Santa.

• Man:

  Oh, that's so cute.

• Greg Walsh:

  It's a hard business, a very risky business. You get bad trees, you get bad lots. You can get bad workers. People are going to be in the spirit to buy Christmas trees. You got to buy more trees. How much is 910 Fraser? Nine foot Fraser?

• Man:

  375.

• Greg Walsh:

  375, nine foot Fraser. Yeah. The big trees are really scarce right now. You have to follow world events like, how is this year going to be? Because when people feel their lives are in jeopardy or scary or things like that, they want to feel better about their home. You see a lit tree that smells wonderful in your home, you feel better. I promise you.

• Woman:

  I sold a half balsam the other day.

• Charles Sturgill, Sturgill Tree Farm:

  Yeah, she loved it. She was about as excited as I'll get out.

  Absolutely. I'm Charles Sturgill. I'm 56 years old. I'm from North Carolina, and I grow Christmas trees for a living. If you count from seed, it takes us about 13 years to get a Christmas tree off the market. In an average year, we sell about 80 to 100,000 Christmas trees.

• Greg Walsh:

  There's not one tree in this whole lot that I don't know the grower who grew it. I know we have trees on this lot right now that were cut two days ago. He brought them.

• Charles Sturgill:

  I just brought up a load of trees to a good friend of mine, Greg. It's my first time to New York, and I was just amazed when I got here. Everybody's been so friendly and nice. I really enjoyed it.

• Greg Walsh:

  Staffing is another huge problem, because how do you find quality people that only want to work one month, and then the rest of the year you don't have work for them? Eric's my main man. Walking through. Never stops working. Never, ever stops working.

• Eric Kang, Greg’s Trees:

  My name is Eric Kang. I'm 51 years old. I live in Quebec, Canada, and I come down once a year to sell Christmas trees with Big Greg. The rest of my time in Canada, I'm planting trees and doing watershed rehabilitation, environmental work. We're a mobile, nomadic family.

• Kashmir Kan-Arias, Greg’s Trees:

  And yeah, been working here with my dad for three years in this Christmas tree sand, which is pretty fun experience, for real.

  This is where we eat and sleep every day and night. This is Greg's bed, and this is my bed. Put all of our little stuff, you know, we got some food over here.

• Eric Kang:

  This will be my 11th year on this sidewalk. So I've seen little kids grow up and leave to college, and they'll come back with their parents and continue the tradition.

• Kashmir Kan-Arias:

  Oh, yeah, it's snowing. It's a miracle. It's a Christmas miracle in Brooklyn.

  I do like it, like, since I've been working with my father is also, like, a difficult situation, you know, sometimes. But I love working with him at the same time, it's just. You can't get better than that.

• Eric Kang:

  He's learning a lot in this business.

• Kashmir Kan-Arias:

  Yeah, my dad's taught me a lot of knowledge of trees and the selling business of this.

  Is this too big? How do you like it? Ask Greg if he can cut us a deal.

• Man:

  Sure. Thanks.

• Kashmir Kan-Arias:

  Big Greg has been really nice to us also, like, for many years already. Just, like, working with him and like, seeing how he does things around and all the Christmas tree stands is just amazing.

• Greg Walsh:

  I might not even do the big one next year. I'm thinking about saying, you know what?

• Charles Sturgill:

  You should see.

• Greg Walsh:

  It caused so much stress this year.

• Charles Sturgill:

  Oh, I know it.

• Greg Walsh:

  But it's like, this is my last year doing it. I know I can't keep doing it. So this is it. I have small cell carcinoma in my lungs. There's like five different places where it's growing. And the chemo's been working, but it can only work so long.

  My son's going to run the business. I'm sure I'll be involved, but I'm not going to be — I'm not taking doing the daily books at night and running around and hiring. And really, it was very eye opening to me that life is short. And my theory is it's really short for all of us. It's really not that long. So go out and enjoy it.