![]() ![]() While it was more expensive than the spruce ( Picea abies) and doesn’t fill the room with a delicate smell of honey and resin, it sports bluish cones and a long-lasting foliage with a silvery underside. The potential of farming firs appeared in the 1990s when the country joined the European Union, with its system of farm subsidies.ĭanish farmers were quick to adopt the Nordmann fir ( Abies nordmanniana). Two figures may help clear things up: Denmark produces about 10 million Christmas trees a year, with the domestic market only absorbing 10%. Indeed, it is precisely because they no longer grow in forests that Christmas trees come from neither Norway nor Sweden, despite these countries’ abundant timber resources. So fear not, you will do no damage to a real forest by purchasing a natural Christmas tree. But before going any further, we should explain that these trees are no longer harvested in forests but farmed. Why? Because the country grows them on a massive scale, making it the EU’s leading producer. Interestingly, most Christmas trees in Europe hail from the realm of Denmark. On Christmas night you will find them in 90% of UK homes, 77% of US households and nearly 25% of those in France – they even has a measure of popularity in Australia, where Christmas occurs during the summer vacation. Regardless of whether you see Christmas trees as a symbol of the winter solstice or the Nativity, the odds are good that you’ll be buying one this year. (This incendiary statement prompted anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss to pen “The torture of Santa Claus”, a witty and thoughtful essay.) For example, on December 23, 1951, in Dijon, France, a red-jacketed mannequin was burned outside the city’s cathedral on the grounds that Saint Nick was a pagan character that did not exist in real life. A range of ancient figures and beliefs converged to form Santa Claus, long accepted by the Catholic church – but not after some resistance. The Protestant origins of decorated fir trees at Yuletide draws on other influences too, much as the invention of Father Christmas. Other Protestant countries followed suit, and the holiday evergreen was first featured in British homes in the 19th century, when gained popularity thanks to Queen Victoria’s Saxon husband, Prince Albert. ![]() Since then, the trees around which revelers danced in medieval town squares in Germany have been brought indoors. He cut down a sapling, took it home, decorated it with candles and told his son that it reminded him of how Christ descended from heaven to live among mortals on Earth. Legend has it that Martin Luther was strolling in the woods on Christmas Eve when he glimpsed stars twinkling among the branches of a fir tree. Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their children admire the royal Christmas tree, December 1848. So, let’s climb on the sleigh and take a ride around this seasonal item, so emblematic of the growth of market economics and world trade, for an informed choice between natural or artificial, locally or globally sourced. Who would have guessed that fir trees would be grown in Denmark especially for the export market, that others would be shipped by helicopter in Oregon, or that factories in China would produce plastic replicas? Nor Prince Albert, who several centuries later set up the first Christmas tree in Windsor Castle. A few hundred years ago, who would have dreamed that the humble Christmas tree would one day be an immense global success? Certainly not Martin Luther, who is said to have decorated a tree with candles to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. ![]()
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