Christmas Trees - Part I

We're spending Christmas with my husband's family and everyone but my youngest brother-in-law is here in my oldest BIL's house (he'll be here next weekend, though). I was helping to clean the kitchen, but I really want to try and write a post. I spent the whole week yearning to write, but life was just too hectic -- I'll fill you in on the details on another post.

I decided to write about Christmas trees after I read Joe's post about her Christmas tree philosophy from almost a month ago. The reason why I didn't post earlier was that I wanted to include photos of past Christmas trees and some of them needed to be scanned. As for Jo(e)'s post, I wrote in her comments' section:

I really like your philosophy, although we unfortunately don't have heirloom ornaments because my mom never cared for Christmas trees and the kids haven't made any yet -- my boys are a bit young, don't go to pre-school and don't like crafts very much. I started buying ornaments in 1995 after I got married and have added quite a few since then (not nearly enough to fill a whole tree, though).

I do like to color coordinate some of the tree decorations, though (since I do have to buy extra stuff because I don't have enough ornaments). One year I had light pink, lavender, and mint green bows and glass balls, plus the other "regular" ornaments, and the other years I do the traditional red, green and white decoration (bows, candy canes, etc).

The time of this post couldn't have been better because I have a question for you, since you do know more about environmentalism than I do. Leaving the discussions of a good smelling beautiful real tree versus the simetrically perfect artificial tree aside, what would the "environmentally correct" thing to do, get a live tree every year or an artificial one?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. A live tree has to be thrown out (good thing it's completely biodegradable), but it spends all its growing years producing oxygen, etc... and it might not have been planted had it not been the demand for Christmas tree. The fake ones will polute the environment after they're discarded many years from now, but they'll "save" trees from being cut down (will they really, though?).

And Jo(e) responded:

Lilian: A real tree is the ecological choice.

I could buy an artificial tree made from plastic (usually polyvinyl chloride) and metal, shipped all the way here from some place like Hong Kong, and it would end up in a landfill in less ten years. Or, I could drive a few miles from my house, to buy a tree that will be in my house for a few weeks, and then turned to mulch. With a real tree, nothing needs to end up in the landfill.

In my area, the profit from Christmas trees is a critical source of income that allows small farmers to hang onto their land, rather than selling it to developers. The trees are often planted on hillsides and pockets of land where other crops can't grow. The trees, while they are growing, do all the kinds of good things that trees do: providing oxygen, helping retain soil, reducing air pollution, providing habitat wildlife. For each tree cut down by a family for their Christmas tree, the tree farmer plants two or three seedlings.

In communities here, leftover Christmas trees are gathered up by the DPW and chopped into mulch, which we can then take free for our gardens in the spring.

I most certainly would not have an artificial tree in a household with small children or pets, since lead is used to stabilize the polyvinyl chloride. The possibility of lead exposure is slight, but it's there. At least, that is what a chemistry grad student explained to me.

Well, good thing that all the trees I've had were real trees, including the one I bought in planted a pot as part of my wedding reception decoration (more on this on a post that's coming up). We planted that one later between the the two buildings of the elementary schools where we used to teach in Brazil. Unfortunately they decided to build on that site and the tree no longer exists.

When I was growing up in Brazil, we never spent Christmas at home. My parents, who worked at a boarding academy, took advantage of the one month of end of the year break to go to the beach with my maternal grandparents, since Christmas time and the week after was the only time my uncle's beach house was available for us to use. I've always loved Christmas and wanted to celebrate it properly, so I was very sad to be at a beach house. One year I was yearning for a Christmas tree so much that I just cut off a branch of a common tree (not even an evergreen) and cut out little balls out of colored paper to make decorations. There was one memorable year (1982, I think) in which we stayed home. My brother and I were so excited! We cut off a large branch of a Brazilian pine tree (araucaria brasiliensis), and put it in a paint can full of sand to make a tree for the living room. We also made small trees for our bedrooms with smaller branches and tiny glass balls. That was one of my favorite Christmas ever. Later, when my grandpa died (when I was 15) and we no longer went to the beach with my grandparents, we spent several Christmas at my aunt's house and I loved to help her decorate the tree. After we got married, I kept the potted Christmas tree from my wedding so I could decorate it for our first Christmas together (even though we spent Christmas elsewhere).

After we moved to the U.S., on our third year here (1999), we had the visit of my "middle" brother-in-law and my husband's cousin, so we decided to get a Christmas tree. It was the only time we went to a field to choose one and had it cut -- it was such a lovely experience! (Sorry I didn't scan a photo of this one, maybe I'll add one later). Then, the next tree was for the 2001 Christmas, when I was pregnant and my three brothers-in-law, and one SIL came to celebrate with us (for 2 years, my in-laws' four sons lived here in the U.S., now only the youngest is back in Brazil). This was the year I decided to do a pink, green, and gold tree:












In the following year, Christmas was at our house again, this time with my mother- and father-in-law who got their wish of a (very) white Christmas, as a snowstorm hit Massachusetts right on Christmas day. We had nine month old Kelvin (the first grandson on both sides of the family) to entertain us (and to entertain), and it was great. (I promise to add a photo of the baby later, OK?). That year I went back to more traditional red (with apple ornaments and bows), white and green tree decorations:












I put up our tree over two weeks ago and I just realized that I don't have any photos in my camera's memory stick as I thought I had and I didn't upload them to the laptop either, so I'll be able to post pictures of this year's tree only two days from now. So I'll leave you with a photo of my SIL's tree, decorated mostly with my own ornaments, which are slowly becoming heirlooms!
So "tomorrow" (I'm actually writing past midnight, but started the post a bit earlier), I'll let you know how the kids liked their presents. I know, I didn't post about that, but I bought them long ago, and they were all wrapped over 10 days ago... not that I didn't have to get some last minute gifts last week. Well, but more on that later. I have to go to bed, it's past 2 a.m. and tomorrow is going to be a looong day, even longer than today, where I spent 6 hours helping to cook the Christmas Eve dinner with my sister-, brother-, and mother-in-law.

I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas is having a wonderful day!! I have yet to send our e-newsletter to our friends and family. Sigh... too many things going on in our lives lately.

Oh, and did you know I have a paoer presentation to finish up for Wednesday night? And did you know I had a job interview on Friday morning? Yeah. Do send lots of good thoughts my way, if you will...