Taylor Swift Talks Living on a Christmas Tree Farm in This 2009 Jimmy Fallon Interview
The "Fortnite" singer went "Back to December" in this rare 2009 Late Night with Jimmy Fallon interview.
Any longtime Swiftie knows that Taylor Swift grew up on a Christmas tree farm — she even wrote a song about it. But that might have been news to fans back in 2009 when she appeared on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.
During her visit on November 2, 2009, the "Fortnite" singer sat down with Jimmy Fallon to talk about the new Platinum Edition of her Fearless album, and how nervous she was to host Saturday Night Live that week. The Late Night Host also asked Swift about her childhood Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania.
"Yeah, it's very festive, isn't it?" Swift joked.
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It wasn't Swift's job to cut down the trees, since she was "like 5." But she revealed to Fallon how her family actually did put little Taylor to work on the farm.
"There are these bugs called praying mantises. They lay eggs and they form pods on the Douglas fir Christmas trees — it's their favorite tree to infest," she explained. "I would walk around the Christmas trees all day and pick them off and put them in like a little basket, so that people wouldn't have bugs in their house."
"'Look at Taylor, honey. Isn't that cute? She's picking the praying mantis larvae and putting it in a basket,'" joked Fallon, with Swift drily adding, "How sweet. What an adorable little hobby for a child."
Taylor Swift's "Christmas Tree Farm" is based on her childhood
Even though Swift and her family moved to Nashville when she was 13, her childhood surrounded by Christmas trees left an impression on her. So much so that she wrote the nostalgic "Christmas Tree Farm" holiday tune about it, released in December 2019.
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"I actually did grow up on a Christmas tree farm. In a gingerbread house, deep within the yummy gummy gumdrop forest. Where, funnily enough, this song is their national anthem," she wrote on Instagram five years ago when the song was released.
The cover art for the single was a photo of a young Swift at the Christmas tree farm, and the music video featured a compilation of vintage Christmas and holiday footage from Swift's childhood. An "Old Timey Version" of the song came out in 2021.
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"In my heart is a Christmas tree farm," she sang in the original holiday tune. Watch Swift's full 2009 interview with Jimmy Fallon in the video above.
