As the Holiday Season gets underway, Galleria Dallas has begun assembling the tallest indoor Christmas tree in the United States.
Over four dozen workers will work this week to help erect the nearly 100-foot-tall behemoth. Once standing, the gigantic Christmas tree will shine with over 200,000 lights and thousands of decorations. Expect new ornaments this year alongside classics you may have seen in years past. As usual, the tree will be capped with a massive 10-foot star weighing 100 pounds.
The indoor tree is assembled upon a roughly five-ton steel frame that holds 700 branches. For perspective, each one of these hundreds of branches is approximately the same size as a typical Christmas tree.
While they only appear briefly each year, Christmas trees are big business in the United States. Across the country, you can find nearly 350 million growing across roughly 15,000 tree farms spanning 350,000 acres.
In 2004, more than $36 million in Christmas trees were sold nationwide.
Notably, there has been an uptick in artificial trees in recent years. In 2004, $27.1 million in real trees were sold, while artificial trees accounted for a fraction of that amount at $9 million. In 2022, however, the sale of real trees dipped to $22 million, with artificial ones totaling around $24 million.
The Lone Star State makes a significant contribution to the Christmas tree industry each year, with over 4 million sold statewide. Texas boasts the second-largest Christmas tree industry in the U.S. South, based on average annual employment and wages.
Before the 1980s, most of the trees in Texas were imported from out of state, from places like Oregon, Wisconsin, and Michigan. However, Texas is seeing a growing trend of local choose-and-cut tree farms in the state.
The Dallas Galleria Christmas tree is expected to be fully constructed and decorated by November 14 and will remain on display until January 6.