I SO love a real holiday tree. The smell, the ambiance when the tree lights are the only lights lit. But it does seem so wasteful. I always think I should wait and pick one up off the street after the holidays, which still has a second life in it.
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We used to buy a live tree with bagged roots and after Christmas, we planted it. By the time I left home, we had 20 trees on the back lot.
We always went out on Christmas eve and found a little one in the woods. No big deal to chop it. There were plenty around. It would stay up until New Year’s Day, then back into the woods it would go. Plenty of critters use such things as a home during the winter. Nature does such things, so this fit right in. Oh, and a week is about right for a tree to be safe before it becomes a fire hazard. I spent 20 years as a firefighter, and went on way too many Holiday House Fires started by what were once live trees left up too long….
We finally acquired a faux tree (which looks rather real) after the two cats chased each other up the last real tree. Buying from a lot was getting expensive anyways, and there were no woods in our area of California to go tromping through, and, besides, we usually go to Pittsburgh so the kids can spend some time with Grandma. But my wife still likes to have a tree in the house.
South Boston, ca 1955; on the 26th or 27th, many little trees wound up stuffed into the monkey bars where we lived (in “public housing”, available to servicemen’s families, while he was on a Med cruise). even before it was full, somebody would light it. WOW! whatta blaze. Brick buildings, not TOO much fire hazard, but then enough coal heating that second-day snow was already gray-to-black…
May your holiday be clean and a bit nicer than that old memory!