Christmas tree season -- I love it, I hate it

[jumptheshadow]

They started playing Christmas music last Tuesday on one of the classical music stations. The same day, Bloomingdale's unveiled their holiday windows.

The local news station also broadcast the annual story about the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. Its history. How it got cut down so it could be transported to New York. I turned the TV off.

That tree has come to symbolize Christmas in our city, and I have to admit that I bring visitors to see it almost every year. However, the cutting of the tree saddens me. I picture how many of these trees stood for decades and were familiar, enduring symbols to many people.

For the same reason I've never had a real Christmas tree during my adult life. We decorate -- the partner is creative and has made our hallway look like a fairyland. Her mom painstakenly creates wreathes for our door. My mom sent us one of those singing Christmas trees, and every season we trot it out and chuckle at it. But even though I love a beautifully decorated tree, I can't bring myself to buy one. I hate the sight of Christmas trees abandoned at the curb. Yes, I guess I'm that sensitive.

Strangely enough, my partner and I feel exactly the same way about Christmas trees. I guess we were meant for each other. My very pragmatic partner tells me, by the way, that if I post this I am going to get flamed from here to Milwaukee. So what the heck? -- it's cold tonight and I could stand the heat.

[hussar]

1. No flame here

I'm on your side and agree with you 100% buy artificial and let the trees live damn it.

[HEyHEY]

2. yeah but they grow them to be slaughtered..I mean harvested

I'm O natural all the way

[hussar]

4. Let em breathe damn it!

they are the ones givin us morans oxygen

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. We have three 3-year-olds in the family.

Christmas is once again a magic time for us. I buy a real tree. They are grown like a regular farm crop in my Midwestern neck of the woods.

[girl gone mad]

5. I'm a vegetarian,

but I'm all for the Christmas tree industry. I believe it is one of the most eco-friendly businensses around. A relative owned a Christmas tree farm for many years and it helped supplement his school teacher income.

For every tree cut down, a new one is carefully raised and nurtured from a seedling, then planted. The demand for real trees keeps a lot of land that would otherwise be developed wild and full of trees, a good place for animals to escape urban sprawl.

Most cities have a program to remove old x-mas trees and grind them for mulch which gets sold or used by the city.

Real is absolutely preferrable to plastic, which is made out of oil and adds chemicals to the air instead of fresh oxygen. One acre of Christmas trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people.

[politicat]

6. No trees for us even if we did celebrate.

Not having kids, it's no big deal but the first year I lived on my own I realized why I wasn't getting sick at Xmas....

I'm allergic to most Xmas trees. (Norfolk pines don't seem to bug me, since I have one as a house plant.) Now, my father is the model for Chevy Chase's Griswold character in National Lampoons. Lights, lights, more lights. (They have to ramp up electric production just for him.... ) The biggest tree he can fit in the house, and Live, not artificial.

So little politicat gets bronchitis every Christmas from age two (the first Christmas I lived with him) to age 16. No one knows why... We move from Indiana to Florida, Florida to Arizona, around several international Military bases.... I get sick in late December every year. A few times, I spend time in hospital because of this nasty bug.

Go to college, fully expecting a lather rinse repeat.... stay healthy. I didn't go home that year, have own apartment I paid for, why give up such a pleasant space when home will be bicker, bicker, bicker?

I avoid all forms of christmas trees now. I shop as much as possible before they arrive so I don't even have to go to the grocery in December. When we had a foster child, we built this framework of wire, ribbon, lights and it was really gorgeous, but the father got custody later and since then.... well... it's hard.

Besides, while that tree hurts me when dead, it's a great thing when alive. And an artifical one is just one more use for oil we can avoid.

Politicat