35-foot Christmas tree raised in Biltmore House’s Banquet Hall

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828NewsNow.com) — Two days after Halloween and one day before Election Day, Biltmore Estate is officially ready to celebrate Christmas, and one of the final touches was installed in the early morning hours of Nov. 2.

The 131-year-old tradition continued as Biltmore House’s Banquet Hall welcomed the traditional towering Christmas tree. It was brought to the estate last Friday from Avery County.

This year’s tree is a little bit taller than trees the Biltmore House has had in years past, according to Trip Hudgins, who is the engineering operations manager for Biltmore House and Gardens.

“It’s about 35 feet tall. We’re used to having trees that around 32 feet tall or so,” Hudgins said.

He was the ringleader of the over-40-person Christmas tree crew. They used steel poles to haul the massive Frasier fir off the flatbed truck and onto rolling platforms to get the tree into the house.

“It’s probably anywhere between 2,500 to 3,000 pounds. It takes a lot of teams throughout this estate to get this tree in here,” he said. “We show up here at about 5:30 in the morning, and we prepare the house and go over everything.”

828NewsNow provided a Facebook livestream of the tree raising. It’s available at the 828NewsNow Facebook page.

After the tree was brought into the Banquet Hall, workers from the balcony used ropes tied to the tree, and workers below pushed as the tree was hoisted up into its final position. It’s just one part of Christmas at Biltmore, which will begin on Nov. 3 and last through Jan. 10.

When the tree was vertical, Lizzie Whitcher was called over to see if the tree was in the right spot. Whitcher, the floral manager at Biltmore Estate, said this is always her favorite time of year at the house.

“We are now at the end of our decorating for Christmas. We actually started the decorating process back in September,” she said. “We’re doing our final touches, and of course, the biggest final touch was the Banquet Hall tree.”

The tree is one of 50 Christmas trees inside the house, according to the Biltmore Estate website. There are also 78 additional decorated Christmas trees throughout the estate, including the 55-foot tall Norway Spruce that is surrounded by 40 illuminated evergreens on the house’s front lawn.