We recently bought our annual Christmas tree and I admit I feel a little guilty about it. Sure, I get it. Christmas trees are meant to be harvested—like any other crop. And it wouldn’t bother me so much if we actually ate Christmas trees. They do smell good, but I’m guessing they’d be hard to chew. Yes, we do recycle the trees. Sort of. But it’s not like recycling newspaper that gets remanufactured into more newspaper. You can’t make new Christmas trees out of the sawdust. (Not nice ones anyway.)
Last year Americans bought between 25-30 million Christmas trees at a cost of over $2 billion. The average tree price was around $72. Imagine what else we could do with that $2 billion. It would pay for every American’s college education. It could build bridges and high- speed trains. It could buy health insurance for, well, dozens of people.
I was concerned that cutting down 25 million trees every year would be bad for our carbon footprint. But the National Christmas Tree Association points out that buying trees supports the forestry business and that for every Christmas tree that is harvested, three more are planted. So eventually, we won’t even have to buy Christmas trees because we’ll all be living in a Christmas tree forest.
It’s not like we’re cutting down big, old pine trees for Christmas. The average Christmas is around six years old. Unless you include the very tall National Christmas Tree, typically propped up near the White House and officially lit by the president. Most environmentalists don’t complain about this wasteful tradition and the ceremony generally goes smoothly. Except for 1970 when the National Christmas Tree was a 78-foot-tall spruce from South Dakota that was so unwieldly, it had to be transported by train. But on the way to Washington, the train derailed. Twice. During the week leading up to the ceremony, strong winds blew the tree down and it had to have a lot of the broken branches replaced, cannibalized from various other trees. Even after the giant Frankenstein tree was set up again and lit by the president, many of the light bulbs exploded because the fireproofing chemical they used caused the electrical sockets to short-circuit. I’m not saying the event was cursed, but the president flipping the switch was Richard Nixon.
Back in the old days when most people burned wood for fuel, Americans were pretty handy with trees. Whittling the base of a small pine tree to fit into a Christmas tree stand wouldn’t have been, as it is today, a near-death experience. Then there is the engineering challenge of cranking those adjusting screws in the stand so the tree looks more or less vertical and doesn’t go crashing to the floor, sending tiny fragments of colored glass ornaments skittering to every corner of the room.
But the real challenge of managing the Christmas tree—and very few people get this right—is knowing when to haul it out to the curb before the needles turn dry and sharp as porcupine quills so that when they try to squeeze it through the door, it doesn’t shower the room with needles like the English arrows in the Battle of Agincourt, raining down upon the French army. And sticking into the carpet… forever.