Christmas tree sales start with an early rush in Sonoma County

Rilaya Chaimongkol, 3, walked into a Petaluma Christmas tree lot and immediately spied the 7-foot-tall Noble fir she wanted to take home.

“It’s the first one we saw. Love at first sight,” said her mom, Kirsten Chaimongkol.

The next decision was whether to get white flocking and glitter applied to the tree’s dark green needles Tuesday night at Mickelson Christmas Trees, a new lot about 2 miles south of the city limits.

Rilaya and her sister, Charlotte, 2, wanted both.

“Yeowie,” Rilaya exclaimed as Matt Kimble, a worker, hoisted a wide plastic hose and sprayed on the snow substitute, a synthetic compound, then hand-sprinkled the silvery glitter.

“That’s perfect,” said the girls’ dad, Joe Chaimongkol.

This weekend is the busiest of the season for tree sales, said lot owner Trevor Mickelson, a sixth-generation Petaluma resident who’s been selling Christmas trees for the past 10 years at various locations in Santa Rosa.

The Friday after Thanksgiving is the traditional start of the season, but Mickelson said he opened the Petaluma lot a week earlier, on Nov. 21, based on stronger consumer demand in this pandemic-altered year.

“Ever since Halloween we’ve been getting calls like crazy,” he said. “People want something to bring joy into their house.”

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Sonoma County is a Christmas tree mecca with about 17 outlets, including urban lots selling precut trees, most imported from Oregon and Washington, and rural farms allowing customers to select and cut their own.

Noble fir is the top-selling precut tree here, though along with other popular species, it grows better farther north where it is wetter in winter and cooler in summer.

The custom of Yuletide decorated trees dates back to 16th century Europe and tree sales, which began in the United States in the 1850s, and are now a $2 billion a year industry, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

Mickelson, who has operated a tree lot at Todd and Stony Point roads in Santa Rosa for five years, doubled down this year, establishing a 10-acre lot on Petaluma Boulevard South a month ago and quickly erecting a 4,000-square-foot white tent in plain view of Highway 101.

Some 2,000 feet of LED light-bearing wires illuminate the lot and a 53-foot banner atop the tent says Mickelson Christmas Trees in huge letters.

“This is a game-changer,” he said on a chilly night when the Chaimongkol family came in.

It appears to be paying off, he said Friday, with sales of more than 1,000 trees so far at both the Petaluma and Santa Rosa lots. A truckload of 700 new trees arrived at both sites, bolstering inventory for the weekend.

Dan and Gia Hodges of Novato, along with their four teenage children, also came in Tuesday night and went home with a 7-foot Noble fir strapped to the roof of their SUV.

Gia and one of the teens had spotted Mickelson’s tent from the freeway a week ago, a fact that delighted the entrepreneur. The trees take up an acre and a half, and Mickelson plans to plant pumpkins and trees next year.

“For us, it’s harder to get into the spirit this year, for sure,” Gia Hodges said, given the grim pandemic, with limits on socializing and the risk of a deadly infection.

“You can’t see family,” said Maddie Mangino, 15. “It will be a quiet Christmas, I’d say.”

Handley Hodges, 13, picked out the tree, saying it was “like a tree that you see in the movies.”

Gia Hodges wanted flocking on the tree, but was outvoted by everyone else. “Mom is losing,” she said.

Kringle’s Korner Christmas Trees, a seasonal fixture at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts property for 17 years, also benefits from freeway exposure.

“Location is everything,” said Morgan Gutzman, who runs the 3-acre lot with her father, Mike Gutzman. All told, the family has been selling trees for 45 years at a series of other Santa Rosa locations.

Black Friday was opening day and “the busiest day we’ve ever had,” Morgan Gutzman said.

Families are buying trees earlier than usual because they are not waiting for children to come home from college, she said. The lot, which holds 1,800 trees, is also selling more large trees, a trend Gutzman attributes to the fact that more people are staying home for the holidays.

“A tree is positive family time. It brings everyone together,” she said. “People are excited to start the season.”

Pronzini Christmas Tree Farm in Petaluma has more than 3,000 Monterey pines growing on 240 acres for you-cut customers, and six species of precut fir trees harvested from their farms in Oregon for sale at lots in San Rafael, Greenbrae and Petaluma. The Oregon crop consists of more than 2 million trees.

Business has been brisk since the family-run business, started in 1963, opened on Black Friday, said Lawrence Gonzalez, the marketing and operations manager.

To beat the weekend crowds, Gonzalez suggests coming out to the farm or the tree lots during the week.

“People are ecstatic to get out with the kids, to get back to some normalcy,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.