O (dead) Christmas Tree, O (dead) Christmas Tree

Teaching yet another generation to regard nature as disposable

About 30 million real Christmas trees are sold each year in the U.S. 

It was January 2 when I’d already caught sight of my neighborhood’s most clearcut (pun very much intended) sign that Santa season is over: Christmas trees lying discarded on the sidewalk. 

Those firs, pines, spruces, cypresses, and cedars were leaning almost upright just a few weeks ago with price tags dangling from their branches. Now they lie horizontal — a few tenacious strands of tinsel clinging to the razor-sharp needles.

Only 24% of American households display a real tree each year.

The blinking lights go back in the hallway closet and the ornaments get stored under the bed in the guest room long before January’s credit card bills arrive.

Your most recent Christmas tree is already, as they say, history.

No longer will it hide brightly wrapped boxes of consumer electronics or display an impaled blonde angel at its apex. Planted and fattened solely for the kill, that doomed tree will now probably serve as a novel target for local dogs on the stroll. 

About 47 percent of American households opt for artificial trees

Before anyone dismisses this post as the work of a Scrooge, please take a second to contemplate how corporate conditioning coerces people to look at trees and only see lumber and profits — as the sound of chainsaws echoes in their clouded heads. 

Do we really wanna teach yet another generation to regard nature as a disposable commodity?

It may not be too late to once again recognize trees as kindred spirits — fellow travelers if you will — with eons of wisdom from which we have so much more to learn.

Why not find out?

Even though they’re sold only once a year, Christmas trees generate a lot of money. In 2021, U.S. households spent $984 million on real trees and $1.01 billion on artificial trees.