BELVIDERE, N.J. — In 1850, Charles Dickens published “A Christmas Tree.” The short story opens with a description of the tree “lighted by a multitude of tapers” and decorated with ornamental guns, pincushions, pen wipers, sugarplums, “teetotums” and “humming-tops.” Despite the fertility of his vision, however, Dickens made no mention of spray-painting the tree a brilliant shade of purple.
That work has been left to John Wyckoff, who upended centuries of holiday custom this fall when he began selling a vibrant array of painted Christmas trees at his family farm in the small rural town of Belvidere, N.J., just east of the Delaware River. Coming in pink, purple, white and two shades of blue, the colorful conifers are more than a little conspicuous amid a forest of pine-green — a vision less Dickens than Dr. Seuss.
Though they occupy only a small plot on a 65-acre farm of some 65,000 trees, the painted ones have caused a stir in an industry fixated on tradition. While many tree-buyers have welcomed the flair, some see the plants as a garish breach of Christmas orthodoxy. Still, hundreds of customers have flocked to Wyckoff’s Christmas Tree Farm over the last few weeks in search of the brightly colored crop. By last Sunday, Wyckoff and his family had sold every one of their nearly 250 painted trees, which cost $11 per foot, $3 more per foot than a traditional tree.
“Even the people who hate it can’t take their eyes off it,” said Wyckoff, 50, a third-generation Christmas tree farmer. “It may not be for everyone, but it’s something a little different.”
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The tree-coloring experiment began in Wautoma, Wisc., where workers for the Kirk Co., a Christmas products wholesaler, wanted to try something new. For years, they had been manufacturing a green, fireproof, latex-based paint to help farmers cover up splotches of natural browning on their trees. But a few Christmases ago, they decided to try some other pigments, which gained modest traction in rural Wisconsin. This season, Kirk began offering the new colors to wider audiences.
“You’ve got some staunch traditionalists who say a tree’s got to be green,” said T. Jay Roland, regional product manager for Kirk. “But times are changing, and there’s a new generation of tree growers out there.”
In the past, Wyckoff had favored a more classical Christmas aesthetic. Indeed, several of his trees graced the White House in 2013 after winning a national contest. But at a Christmas tree grower convention this summer, the paints caught Wyckoff’s eye and he could not resist. Intrigued, he brought home some promotional materials to gauge reactions from his wife, Leslie, and their children.
“They looked at me like I was crazy,” he said. Nonetheless, Wyckoff forged ahead. On a recent Saturday evening, he strapped on a gas mask and spray-painted 18 Douglas firs (nine purple, nine white) alongside County Road 519 in Warren County.
The next morning, his parking lot was packed with customers eager to buy a painted tree, and onlookers eager to catch a glimpse. Some called in after driving by to confirm they had not been hallucinating. All the hoopla was enough to convince Wyckoff that he was on to something, and he began painting as many trees as he could.
The convention of the natural green Christmas tree has been challenged before. In the 1930s, artificial trees made from the same material as toilet bowl brushes hit the market, followed by trees made of PVC plastic, aluminum and strings of lights, each newfangled iteration gnawing away at Christmas conservatism. But something about the mix of real trees in gumdrop tones has caused an uproar in this typically quiet corner of northern New Jersey.
“To tell you the truth, everyone in the industry is pretty traditional, so this is a big shake-up,” said Donna Cole, executive secretary of the New Jersey Christmas Tree Growers’ Association. “We’ve never seen anything this drastic before.”
Cole commended the Wyckoffs’ success but called the painted trees an “eyesore” and said she would never sell them on her farm in affluent Hunterdon County. “In my town, people would laugh at painted trees,” she said. “We’re into the classy stuff, not the glitz. We want our trees looking like an L.L. Bean catalog.”
At the Wyckoffs’ farm, Tracy Henrikson and Todd Hawthorne saw the trees a little differently. The couple drove nearly an hour and a half from Princeton, New Jersey, to snag a dark blue spruce. “We think it’s awesome,” Henrikson said. “It’s like a owning a work of art.”
“Plus our daughter will love it,” Hawthorne said.
Not every family found consensus so easily. As soon as Bob and Erin Yeisley arrived at the farm over the weekend, their three children made a beeline for the painted trees. “Absolutely not,” Yeisley said. “It’s just not Christmas-y.” She held firm in her objections, but there was little to be done.
“Sorry, Mom,” said her 13-year-old son, Jordan. “You’re outvoted.”
As for the Wyckoffs, there was no debate at all: They agreed to stick with a classic evergreen.
“In my mind,” Wyckoff said, “a Christmas tree is green.”