![]() Everybody’s got an attic full of Christmas decorations, he said, and they like putting their heirloom decorations on. Homes for the holidays: Tour one of these festively decorated mansions Decorating tips? Use your imaginationĪs for decorating, well, Schenk said the tree is already decorated purple, so she just puts some lights on so people can see it at night.ĭavid Hanggi said you can decorate any tree. It’s just a pretty decoration out there and it fits in with the rest of my purple stuff.” “I love purple and everything’s purple here at the pie shop. ![]() “They say, ‘You even have a purple tree,’” Schenk laughed. People who stop in say they love it, Schenk said. Monica Schenk, of Monica’s Pies fame, of course has a purple tree, which is outside her Naples pie shop. If you’ve ever stepped barefoot on a pine needle on a Christmas morn, you know how important that is. The needles tend to stay on the painted trees longer. The colorful trees tend to be sold by the time the Hanggis open up for the season. In fact, some press coverage in recent years referred to their popularity as a "trend." Tree farms from Long Island to Central New York and the Southern Tier offer them. ![]() Purple, at least around here, is a constant. They’ve done red, white and blue in certain election years, and they have been asked if they will do Buffalo Bills football team colors - someday, perhaps. ![]() In previous years, they tried orange, because some of their customers came from Syracuse -and they come from Rochester, Buffalo, Elmira and Pennsylvania - but that didn’t work out because when the paint faded, it didn’t look right. This year, the 50 or 60 painted trees are either sugar plum purple or midnight blue. About 5% of what they sell are painted trees, either from the farm on Naples’ main drag or their 20-acre farm up near Hunt Hollow Ski Club for the “U-pick” crowd - the kind who dig the Chevy Chase "Christmas Vacation" movie, he joked. That they did, although business for the painted trees didn’t exactly explode, David said. I just thought people would enjoy that,” Celeste said. It’s something different, something neat. They did their first tree purple - remember, Naples is grape country - before a fall Naples Grape Festival. Then after seeing a demonstration of how it was done, he was a convert.Ĭhristmas events: Here are the holiday happenings in Canandaigua The paint was green, and meant to be used in case a tree was off-color.Ĭeleste’s wheels first began to turn and she tried, unsuccessfully at first, to talk her husband into trying it. Around that time, while attending a summer convention of the Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York, they saw a painted tree. The purple Christmas tree stands out among the traditional trees at Hanggi's Tree Farm in Naples.ĭavid and Celeste Hanggi took over the family farm from his parents four years ago. “It’s a ‘grandma’s secret apple pie recipe’ type of thing,” he said. Just how does the tree go from green to purple?Īh, paint - a food grade paint and non-toxic, so if pets chew on it or kids get a hold of it, it’s not going to harm them, Hanggi said.Īnd in the right hands, it’s not that hard to do, but you’ll have to trust him. “It scared the bejeebers out of me, and so I went out and bought a lot more paint and painted a lot more trees,” Hanggi said. To avoid landing on journalism’s naughty list, here’s the facts. The old saying goes, if choosing between printing the legend or the fact, print the legend. “I took care of that girl when she came down to get her tree that year because our business exploded even more because of it.” “That’s of course a joke and not really what happened. Purple is big.ĭavid Hanggi, co-owner of the family farm, said she put it on Facebook and the story went viral. David and Benjamin Hanggi, along with Tiny, sell colorful Christmas trees at their Naples farm.
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