Argument and snobbery rages over the correct time to put up a Christmas tree and other decorations. For some, late October isn’t too early. For others, the brinkmanship of Christmas Eve is traditional.
More recently, debate is growing around whether it's appropriate to put up a Christmas tree at all. At a time of environmental loss and climate chaos, should we be cutting down living trees for such a short period of indulgence?
Should we use plastic, supposedly reusable, trees instead? There are even companies that rent potted Christmas trees by the day or week.
Isn't it tradition?
There are no clear answers to any of these questions, though anyone arguing that Christmas tree decorating is an ancient British custom should be aware that the first documented Christmas tree in the UK was erected in 1800 by Charlotte, King George III's German queen.
She was leaning on older German practices of decorating evergreens at Christmas. Some folklorists argue that this, in turn, stems from ancient pagan rituals whereby bringing living greenery into the house was meant to stave off the dark spirits and be a hopeful hint of the coming spring. But the link is tentative.
In Britain, habitual trend-setter Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria, popularised the Christmas tree in the 1840s and 50s, and soon Christmas trees became a staple of wider society beyond the aristocracy.
Spruce it up
According to the British Christmas Tree Growers Association, some 7-8 million Christmas trees are sold in the UK each year and the vast majority of these are grown here.
The traditional Christmas tree is the Norway spruce and a huge specimen is given each year to the people of London by the city of Oslo in thanks for Britain's support during the Second World War. You can see it standing proudly in Trafalgar Square from early December.
However, of the many species that are sold as Christmas trees today, some 80% are Nordmann firs, originally native to Turkey and Georgia.
Cost to the environment
The impact of Christmas trees on the environment is mixed. For many farmers and growers, the trees are an important crop that can be raised on marginal land but the majority of these plantations are monocultures, fed and controlled with chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Opportunities for wildlife are limited.
Nordmann firs, for instance, are harvested at around 10 years old when they are about 2m high, which doesn't provide enough time for complex ecosystems to establish themselves. And if the trees are planted on wildlife-rich grassland or at the expense of an existing woodland, the environmental cost is huge.
However, a study in Germany published in 2022 (Annals of Applied Biology) found that Christmas tree plantations offered significant nesting and resting sites for farmland birds in otherwise sterile agricultural landscapes. The millions of growing trees also pull enormous quantities of carbon from the atmosphere – 10kg per tree per year – and store it until they are cut down.
Is plastic fantastic?
The alternative is to buy a plastic tree – and surveys suggest 50% of us do just that. The majority of these trees are manufactured abroad and then shipped to the UK. The justification is that each tree is used many times, but the GWP Group of packaging manufacturers found that 14% of plastic trees are binned each year – and they are virtually impossible to recycle.
The Carbon Trust estimates that the carbon footprint of a fake tree is seven to 20 times that of a real tree.
Borrow rather than buy?
Another alternative to buying a cut tree is to rent a live one. Many companies now provide this service, but it is usually more expensive than buying a tree outright. The same can be said of buying a potted tree, which can be brought inside year after year but does require a considerable amount of care year-round.
How to purchase responsibly
The Soil Association has advice for those looking to buy a real tree:
- Make sure it has Forest Stewardship Council Certification (FSC), which promotes sustainable forest management.
- Source your tree organically so the tree will have been grown without chemical fertilisers and pesticides.
- Source your tree locally, to reduce the cost of transport and to support the local economy.
- The best way to dispose of a real tree is to chip it and use it as a mulch rather than burn it. Or it can be cut up and left in a pile to rot, providing habitats for insects and other life.
Main image: Getty Images
