11 weird and wonderful Christmas trees in the U.S.

Genesee Brewery has been lighting up Rochester, New York’s High Falls district with its keg tree since 2014. Over 500 half-barrel kegs, stacked 27 feet high, are adorned with 20,000 lights and topped with a rotating neon Genesee sign. After a year off due to the pandemic, the keg tree is back for 2021. The brewery’s on-site pub, the Genesee Brew House, is hosting a series of events called 12 Days of Keg Tree, which includes brunch with Santa and the release of a holiday cinnamon cream ale. We’ll toast to that!

File this under quintessential New England moments: in Maine, you’ll find Christmas trees made of “lobstah” traps that pop up in fishing villages throughout the region, including Kennebunkport (one of the best Christmas towns in the USA). It’s been a tradition since the ‘80s in the village of Cape Porpoise, where 45 traps are piled high with buoys, lights, and wreaths to welcome the Christmas season and celebrate the community all at the same time.

Pretty much every kid’s dream is to get paid to build with Legos, right? Well, that’s exactly what they do at Legoland. The theme parks are known for jaw-dropping displays made entirely of little plastic bricks, and the holidays are no exception. Legoland California Resort features a massive Christmas tree built out of over 245,000 green Duplo blocks (if you can’t make it to California, there’s a similar tree at Legoland’s Florida Resort as well in between Tampa and Orlando). The final product, which stands 30 feet tall, is adorned with 11,000 LED lights and over 400 Lego ornaments. The park is also one of the few places in southern California where you can play in real snow, though it’s made on-site and doesn’t fall from the sky.

Christmas at the beach calls for something special, and certainly not the usual evergreen boughs. A sandcastle feels much more appropriate, doesn’t it? For the last 10 years, West Palm Beach, Florida, has commissioned a giant downtown sand sculpture on its Great Lawn. The tree, nicknamed Sandi, is made of over 700 tons of sand piled 35 feet high. When the sun goes down, Sandi is illuminated with nightly light shows synchronized with music.

Every December since 1947, Baltimore residents light up 34th Street and create one of the most dazzling holiday light displays in the USA. The street’s 700 block is full of quirky creations, but one of the most bizarre is a Christmas tree made of hubcaps. Eight feet of hubcaps are wired together in a Christmas tree shape and topped with a yellow stegosaurus (naturally). Jim Pollack, the creator and owner of the tree, adorns his yard with wacky sculptures each year (like a metallic Santa Claus crab with wrenches for arms), but the hubcap tree is perhaps the most beloved of the entire 34th Street neighborhood.

If all you want for Christmas is your two front teeth, get a mouthful of this. Preservation Dental in Northville, Michigan, debuted its toothy tree constructed of (thankfully) fake teeth in 2020, and has brought it back again this year (complete with a light and music show). The 16-foot-high tree contains 1,111 model teeth and was raised on 11/11 at 11:11 am (1111 is a sacred number for Dr. William Demray, who had the idea for the tree). Dreaming of a pearly white Christmas, anyone?