Baby Christmas Trees: Littleton Assn. Wants You To 'Keep It Real'

LITTLETON, CO -- Picking out a real Christmas tree is fun for children, the pine smell is heavenly, they are fully recyclable. So why do so many people buy plastic Christmas trees? The American Christmas Tree Association released a Nielsen survey Dec. 8 showing that 95 million U.S. homes would display a Christmas tree this year, but only 19 percent of expect to have real trees.

The Littleton-based Christmas Tree Promotion Board, an industry organization that represents 15,000 U.S. Christmas tree farmers, is hoping to attract the interest of millennials by pitching the real Christmas tree as a part of the food-to-table organic farming movement. The association's "Keep It Real" campaign shows farmers who grow the trees, touting the benefits to the environment, jobs produced and the fully-recyclable nature of real trees.

There are approximately 350 million Christmas trees growing on U.S. farms and approximately 100,000 people are employed full or part-time in the Christmas tree industry, according to a University of Illinois Extension fact sheet. But the majority of Americans still seem to prefer the quick setup of artificial trees, which don't need to be watered and don't shed needles everywhere.

According to the association, most families buy real trees when there are children in the house. The growers of real Christmas trees see this as an opportunity: As millennials start to become parents, the trade group hopes this will be a new chance to grow the sales of real trees as these new families build their own holiday traditions.

The Keep it Real campaign wants you to know these things about real Christmas trees:

• Farmers grow Christmas trees as a crop, taking ten years to grow each trees. (They are not cut down from forests.)
• Christmas trees grow well on poor soil that cannot be used for other crops.
• As they grow, pines convert carbon dioxide into oxygen and roots help soil erosion.
• Christmas trees can be recycled into mulch, unlike plastic trees, which end up in the landfill.
• For every real tree that is cut down, another one is planted.

The Colorado Dept. of Agriculture provides a list of live Christmas Tree locations here.

Watch a promotional video for the Keep It Real Campaign:

Image via Christmas Tree Promotion Board