(courtesy First Showing)
SNAPSHOT
In the city that never sleeps, five families hustle each winter to turn sidewalks into holiday outposts. The Merchants of Joy follows these Christmas die-hards as they source, sell, and safeguard a family tradition at risk. It’s a warm, grounded portrait of pride, grit, and the joy they bring—one tree, one customer, one season at a time. The Merchants of Joy is directed by the journalist / doc filmmaker Celia Aniskovich, director of the films Burn It Down!, Fruitcake Fraud, and Call Me Miss Cleo previously, plus other short films & projects. Based on The Epic Magazine & New York Magazine article, “Secrets of the Christmas Tree Trade” by Owen Long. It’s produced by Celia Aniskovich, Zoe Vock, Arthur Spector, Joshua Davis, Joshuah Bearman. [The Merchants of Joy] premiered at the 2025 DOC NYC Film Festival [in November 2025] (courtesy First Showing)
It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that Christmas is an endless parade of candy canes, kissing under mistletoe and Santa booming out choice “HO! Ho! HO!”s whenever he’s so inclined, but as the brilliantly executed The Merchants of Joy shows us, it can also be more than a little cut-throat.
It is, at least when it comes to selling Christmas trees in New York a business and a potentially lucrative one at that, if all the cards fall in your favour.
But that hardly ever happens; and yet, despite all the stresses and strains and the rivalry and the double-dealing, five families have been doing the same thing year in and year out, hustling to lock up tree suppliers, key spots on the sidewalks of New York City and long-time employees who are the beating heart and soul of businesses that take many other forms throughout the year.
It’s not lifestyle for those who want an easy life, and yet the next generation, in at least two of these families, are not lining up to take on the burden of carrying on the family business but actively working to make that happen, learning the ropes and working hard to ensure that these edge-of-the-seat businesses, all predicated on peoples’ love of Christmas, survived to sell trees another year.
The Merchants of Joy starts off as a frenetic love letter to New York City and to the people who sell the trees to a populace who prefer their trees to be real not plastic – there’s one scene where one of the sellers, a no-nonsense but goodhearted and civic-minded straight-talking woman by the name of Heather Neville, laughs out loud with wry disbelief when she recounts how her own mother has gone artificial – but soon segues into an illuminatingly gentle but incisively told story of family, of bonds that supersede making money (but barely), and in the case of at least one seller, Gregory Walsh, about appreciating the here and now even in the midst of peak selling frenzy.
We also meet George Nash and his wife and partner Jane Waterman and their heir apparent Ciree – she’s frank about who she is, saying “Two things you’ll find when you Google me … A multimillion-dollar business and getting arrested for heroin.” – but it’s clear she loves her family and the business – and George Schmidt, a single man with four kids who may talk tough but is a softy looking for love and who’s delighted when it appears to find him.
The fifth player in this compelling tale, which is almost low-key Shakespearian in its scope and scale, and also its emotional impact, is Kevin Hammer, a shadowy Keyser Söze (The Usual Suspects) who doesn’t socialise with the other four families – they’re frenenies who help each other out to an extent and who get together one time at the end of the season – and who appears to both help and actively hinder their prospects. (Fascinatingly he doesn’t appear on camera and you only hear him via recorded interview).
What really strikes you about The Merchants of Joy, which takes you chronologically through the season and deep into the lives of its surprisingly candid subjects (except when it comes to business secrets), is how much each of these people have a passion for what they do.
Sure, they want to make money; they are businesspeople, after all, and in a city that worships and love the stuff possibly more than any other.
But, and this is a critically important “but” in this unexpectedly heartfelt documentary, they really love what they do, they take their role in bringing festive happiness to people very seriously, and they often sacrifice time and profit margin if it will make a kid smile or help a charity out.
Gregory Nash, who comes across as the most decent of the lot of them, and whose shy son, “Little Greg” is stepping into his shoes so the dad he clearly loves deeply can retire, actually plays Santa right across the city for all kinds of groups, committed to bringing joy where he can.
His story too is perhaps the personal as his cancer recurs during the filming of The Merchants of Joy and it looks as if this could be his last Christmas which genuinely tugs at your heartstrings.
What Celia Aniskovich’s expertly directed documentary does most profoundly well is how it establishes how powerful the bonds of family can be, and that even in a business where everything hinges for the entire on five weeks of the year starting in late November at Thanksgiving, there are so many people who care not only about their immediate family members but their employees, many of whom are ex-cons etc who otherwise wouldn’t catch a break, who are, for all intents and purposes, family too.
How far that goes is illustrated when Heather finds a homeless drug addict sleeping rough in one of selling lot offices and rather than calling the police on him, encourages him to get back on his feet and to get the help he needs.
It’s a moment of rare unguarded humanity in a documentary full to the brim with it, reinforcing that even the most calculating and earnest of business operators in this business have beating hearts and that there are things that matter to them well beyond the bottom line.
You might not think The Merchants of Joy is going to stroke the fires of your festive heart but in its own quietly revelatory way it does, shining a lot on the Christmas tree lots you see in many big American cities, how they are struggling to compete with their Big Box competitors and yet won’t give up without a damn good fight, and reminding viewers that family matters, that passion for what you do often supersedes all else, and that when it comes to Christmas it is possible to make money and still make the world a better place too (unless you’re Kevin Hammer and then all bets are off).