CHRIST(mas tree) died for our grins.

Each year, more than thirty million trees are harvested for Christmas. Eventually, most will end up in as trash.  Some will be repurposed, but most will end up rotting away in landfills (or surreptitiously tossed into fields or woods.)

Some things can be done that don’t involve landfills. Composting works or using them to create food for fish in larger rivers, but each of these is limited in its effect.

Then there is the less likely (due to the LED lighting) possibility of fire.  Those of us who grew up in the generation of incandescent bulbs all bear the scars of at least one Christmas Bulb Burn.

I’m not suggesting we ban live trees, on the contrary. I enjoyed finding the tree, cutting it down, and hauling it home; the smell of fresh pine is genuinely the aroma of Christmas. But we ought to at least include a plan for honoring the sacrifice of killing the tree by doing something unharmful to the earth that produced it.

This may be an incentive to embrace live trees while considering their final demise. Eighty (80%) percent of artificial trees are made in China. And the trend is away from live trees to artificial ones in the US. 

Like the idea of tariffs, how about we start there?

Now, here comes the part where I rewrite history contradicting the stories embraced by America. The tradition of using a tree to celebrate an event arose in several areas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe (Winter Solstice). The modern Christmas Tree tradition is believed to have started in 16th-century Germany by the Lutherans. (I leave it to all the flavors of Christianity to argue over the validity of that claim.) 

It did not begin when Jesus came over on the Mayflower. And , of course, December 25th is a co-opted Pagan Celebration, but that’s a whole other topic.

The Christmas tree became popular in the US because of a 19th-century version of an “influencer,” Queen Victoria. A book featuring an engraving of the Queen with a decorated Christmas tree set off a trendy new fashion.

The first public Christmas Tree was erected at the White House in 1923.

No matter how it all started, we found a way to mass-market it. We took an isolated fashion trend, applied American ingenuity at production, and set it wild. 

Thirty million trees die for our grins every year. Thirty million trees that took at least seven years to reach maturity before we could execute them for our amusement. Wouldn’t it be nice to put as much thought into how we honor their sacrifice as we do into decorating them for such a short period?