The Grove Christmas tree this year is one of the tallest, standing at 100-feet. (jamiey/Flickr)

You know it's the holiday season when everywhere you turn it's red, green, and snow all over. Various Los Angeles destinations liven up their venues for the holidays by way of large-scale decorations and tree lighting ceremonies. These huge operations can get very costly, with prices reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

While places like The Grove and the Pershing Square would only release vague suggestions about the pricing of their lavish holiday decor, Christmas tree decorators and wholesale tree sellers lent their professional opinion to help form rough estimates of just how much The Grove Christmas experience costs.

The 100-foot Christmas tree that sits in the middle of The Grove costs roughly $1,000 per foot, totaling to around $100,000, according to the producers themselves, Victor's Custom Christmas Trees.

One large-scale ornament (like the ones you see adorned on the Christmas tree at The Grove) can cost up to $40, say Moskatel's employees. Multiply that times thousands of ornaments, and the decorations alone can cost upwards to about $40,000.

And the tree-lighting ceremony that included Mary J. Blige, Robin Thicke, and Mario Lopez this year? That price tag is a whole other ballpark.

Across town about 20 minutes away from The Grove is Skid Row and the Hospitality Kitchen. The Kitchen runs daily to feed residents breakfast, lunch and dinner for about $500 per day, says employee Catherine Morris. This price includes the cost of the ingredients and of running the kitchen itself.

Nearby, the Union Rescue Mission serves to help feed, house and medicate homeless men, women and children for the grand total of about $50,000 per day.

After decorations and the tree itself, The Grove spends as much money on its Christmas decor as it does to keep the Union Rescue Mission running for 3 days (even longer with the addition of the tree lighting ceremony event), or Hospitality Kitchen running for roughly 7 months.

The holiday season means many things—including a massive spike in sales for businesses. The various missions and soup kitchens along Los Angeles's skid row say that the holiday season is also a huge time for volunteering, perhaps that means businesses opening their pockets as well.

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