Nearly €30 million was spent in the State this Christmas on an estimated 400,000 Irish Christmas trees.
While there have been many complaints about the price consumers have had to pay for their trees, few homes are without one this year.
The Christmas tree business here has grown dramatically over the past decade and Bord Glas, the Irish Horticulture Board, estimated that sales ex-forest this year were worth €14 million.
Currently there are almost 10,000 acres of forestry totally dedicated to the trade spread over counties Wicklow, Wexford, Carlow and Tipperary.
Coillte, the semi-state forestry service, is the largest producer of Christmas trees and this year turned out 180,000 trees from its tree farms in Tipperary and Limerick. There was also a lively export trade in trees with over €2.5 million worth going North of the Border.
Other consignments, according to Bord Glas, went to the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Switzerland in a trade worth €5 million.
Because Irish growers have adapted their growing methods, Ireland produces one of the finest Christmas trees in the world and as a result services the quality markets overseas.
The Noble Fir is the most popular variety accounting for 60 per cent of the market with the Lodgepole Pine and Nordman Fir taking 30 per cent share and the Norway Spruce accounting for 5 per cent of sales.
Consumers here were encouraged to buy real Irish Christmas trees such as Noble Fir and Lodgepole Pine as they are environmentally friendly and will not shed their needles.
Mr Christy Kavanagh, chairman of the Irish Christmas Tree Growers said Ireland has ideal climatic conditions for growing fresh, top quality Christmas trees of different sizes and varieties suited to everybody's needs.
"Irish growers have taken the best growing techniques from Europe and North America and adapted them to our own unique growing conditions," he said.
He said growing conditions for the 2003 season were almost ideal with a wet spring and early summer followed by a dry late summer and autumn.
He said there were over 100 specialist Irish Christmas tree growers in the Republic.
In 1884 Prince Albert (husband of Queen Victoria of England) is credited with bringing the Christmas tree tradition to Windsor Castle where it spread to Ireland through the "big houses".