The Cheapest Christmas Tree in Michigan

Oscoda — You can buy a live Christmas tree for just $5, you just have to wander through a forest to get it.

For the last six years, my family has put up a small artificial tree we purchased at Walmart for $65. My husband and I bought it in 2018 as newlyweds—young newlyweds, working low-paying jobs right out of college. The tree smelled like plastic, and I got hives after wrapping it with lights. We swore that next year, we’d have a live tree for Christmas.

But we never did. In Oakland County, real trees can easily go for $100—an expense we’ve never managed to squeeze into our Christmas budget, which has had to make room for baby dolls and magnetic tiles.

But this year, we finally made good on our promise after learning we could buy a $5 Christmas tree permit and chop down our own. The permits are sold by three of Michigan’s national forests: Huron-Manistee National Forest, Hiawatha National Forest, and Ottawa National Forest.

According to the U.S. Forest Service, more than 500 people purchase Christmas tree permits each year for the Huron-Manistee Forest alone. The program aims to promote forest health by thinning areas packed with pines, which helps other trees and wildlife flourish.

The permit program also aims to carry on “a cherished tradition,” according to Deputy Forest Supervisor Sierra Dawkins. “For families creating new traditions, a trip to the national forests to cut their own Christmas tree may be a thrilling experience as they discover the joy of hiking through the forest in search of the perfect holiday centerpiece.”

So in the spirit of frugality, conservation, and merriment, I bought a permit—which actually cost $7.50 because of “fees and services”—and asked my husband to find a saw. We loaded our two tiny children into our tiny car and zipped up I-75 to Huron-Manistee in search of a holiday centerpiece of our own. 

The day before, I had called the forest’s supervisor’s office, asking if someone could be so kind as to point me to the spot for Christmas trees. I imagined a park ranger would direct me to an easy-to-find parking lot at the mouth of a well-defined trail that would lead us to a thicket of plump, young pines.

Instead, she told me she didn’t know of any go-to locations. She even glanced at photos of her family’s trip to Huron-Manistee’s Lumberman’s Monument to see whether she could spot any festive-looking evergreens. But none were in sight. She said we’d have to do quite a bit of wandering to find our tree.

She also told me that because it’s rifle season, we’d need to wear hunter orange in the forest. 

I took only some of her advice. The next day, we hit the road wearing hats the color of traffic cones and drove straight to the Lumberman’s Monument. Then we displayed our $5 permit proudly on the dash and began our search.

Deciding where to forage for our tree turned out to be the hardest part of the trip, if you don’t count coaxing our 2-year-old to use a gas station bathroom. The map clearly displayed which forest roads permitted all vehicles. Then we had to cross-reference those routes with a 2024 Firewood Map to make sure we didn’t chop down a tree in a no-cut area.

We drove about 10 minutes away from the Lumberman’s Monument down sandy dirt roads. Beautiful pines with full branches dotted the edges of these paths, but they were off limits to us. 

Each forest maintains slightly different rules, but Huron-Manistee instructed us to walk 50 feet from dirt roads before cutting a tree. So we parked and started walking. 

In the woods, the pines thinned considerably. Many of the trees we found were Charlie Brown trees. Thin and leaning. Sparse and brown.

In the end, it took two stops to find the tree. Don’t misunderstand: We didn’t track down a Hallmark-worthy tannenbaum in just two short bursts of hunting. It’s just that after an hour and a half of meandering, it started to rain. And the toddler started to cry. And the preschooler began asking for hot chocolate. 

So I pointed to a tree in front of me and said, “How about that one?” And then my husband chopped it down with a rusty axe I didn’t know we owned.

The tree we took home would not have made Clark Griswold proud. Its branches are scarce. Its trunk is spindly. And its needles are far less numerous after making the trip back to Metro Detroit.

But it’s ours. Standing in our living room, wrapped in yellow lights and draped in gingham ribbon, it offers a better story than our plastic shrub from Walmart ever could. 

We might not always get our Christmas tree this way, but it sure was a good deal.

Katie Clarey is a contributing writer for Michigan Enjoyer.