Border agents stop 'tree' elf

NEW YORK, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. Customs agents have barred a lauded Canadian seller of Christmas trees from setting up shop in New York City this year.

For the last nine years, Daniel Lemay, 39, a graphic designer from Montreal, has brought his trees south to sell in front of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, The New York Times reported Sunday.

Each year, Lemay donated 10 percent of his Christmas sales, about $3,000, to the church and lived in an elaborate, birch-sapling shack he designed and transported from Canada for the season.

But this year, Lemay was stopped at the border in Beecher Falls, Vt., where he said border agents told him only U.S. residents could bring in trees to sell, the Times reported. Lemay quickly sold his trees to another Canadian grower who is having Roger Boust, a retired tree farmer from the Catskills, sell them on Second Street, the Times reported.

Nonetheless, residents in the Bowery are saddened and feel as if the grinch "stole our Christmas tree man," said the Rev. Frank Morales, associate pastor of St. Mark's.