Painted Christmas trees challenge tradition

Belvidere, New Jersey

IN 1850, Charles Dickens published A Christmas Tree. The short story opens with a description of the tree "lighted by a multitude of tapers" and decorated with ornamental guns, pincushions, pen wipers, sugarplums, "teetotums" and "humming-tops". Despite the fertility of his vision, however, Dickens made no mention of spray-painting the tree a brilliant shade of purple.

That work has been left to John Wyckoff, who upended centuries of holiday custom this fall when he began selling a vibrant array…