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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— village December 2009 - January 2010
Ecological Christmas
Christmas trees in
the White House when he became President in
. A famed outdoorsman and environmen- famed outdoorsman and environmen-
talist, he highlighted the harvesting of trees for
ornamentation as a blatant example of defores-
tation due to unnecessary commercial causes.
Was he right? Right or wrong, Roosevelt’s ban
on Christmas Trees lasted just one year. His
two youngest sons – Archie () and Quentin ()
– dug up a tree from the White House grounds
and installed it in the room where the family
gathered for present-giving on Christmas day.
They brought the White House electrician in on
the plot and he lit the tree, just years after
Thomas Edison’s assistant invented Christmas
tree lights.
The twinkling Christmas tree has become
one of the most persistent and pervasive icons of
our civilisation, instantly recognisable and for-
ever associated with the cheer and goodwill of
the holiday season. But in fact, the tradition is
fairly recent, especially in Ireland. The origins
go back to the Roman festival of Saturnalia when
part of the preparations included cutting a fir tree
and bringing it into the house. “Loose reins are
given to public dissipation”, Seneca the Younger
wrote. “Everywhere you may hear the sound of
great preparations, as if there were some real dif-
ference between the days devoted to Saturn and
those for transacting business”. Saturnalia was
adopted by Christians in the fourth century with
other pagan holidays. By the seventh century, the
custom of using greenery to celebrate the winter
solstice had become a part of religious Christmas
festivities.
Although often considered part of the
Germanic tradition, the first decorated tree is gen-
erally credited to Riga in Latvia in . By the
s the custom had spread to England. Queen
Victoria’s diary for described “two large
round tables on which were placed two trees hung
with lights and sugar ornaments”. A photograph
of Prince Albert and the family by the royal tree
taken in was lifted by an American jour-
nal. Victoria’s crown and Albert’s moustache were
removed, and this iconic Christmas family pho-
tograph was adopted by a nation that now grows
half a billion trees a year and boasts a collection
of million artificial trees. There’s no stopping
Christmas trees now, as Roosevelt discovered,
albeit that he – and a large and vociferous press
– tried his best. This was, of course, in the days
before Christmas trees were grown commercially
and simply selected from forests. In fact, when
Roosevelt took his children to his Secretary of the
Interior for a telling off, they listened instead to a
lecture that suggested appropriate thinning pro-
duced a better timber from most forests.
According to the Irish Christmas Tree Growers
Association [ICTGA], “Best of all when you buy
a real Christmas Tree, carefully grown and cul-
tured in Ireland there is that extra special knowl-
edge that you are supporting nature and the
environment”. One Irish Christmas tree com-
pany proudly boasts that weed control is done
by special varieties of sheep, making their trees
“almost organic”. Others point out that, “an acre
of Christmas trees provides for the daily oxygen
requirements of people”. Given the intensive
nature of the cultivation, the use of fertilisers,
,
The history and current reality
t o n y l o w e s
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES
growth regulators, and pesticides, these seem
dubious boasts. Certainly Coillte, our State Forest
Board, got its fingers burnt in the Christmas tree
market. In , their Chairman announced the
planting of , trees that year, with a prom-
ise of the same number to be planted each year for
the next six years. The entire Irish market is only
, trees. However, Coillte went to the frost-
free West Coast of America for advice and species,
rather than Europe, only to find that the chosen
species - Noble Fir - was not frost-resistant. Soil
and elevation can be crucial; drainage and roads
can cost more than the crop itself. Management
had insufficient knowledge of how to cultivate the
trees to enable them to attain sufficient quality for
the European market. They used the traditional
techniques of spruce growers of pruning, shearing,
and weeding. “This works effectively with spruces
but less so with firs, and explains why the Irish
market is now producing some poor quality speci-
mens”, the UK trade journal Horticultural Week
wrote as these trees came on the market.
The entire production of one Coillte Christmas
tree farm had to be written off when the splints
intended to straighten the leaders proved a cure
worse than the illness. % of the trees on some
farms were unsaleable. Coillte tried to conceal
its failure by inventing new grades for trees, sub-
dividing the bottom of the three officially recog-
nised classes of the ICTGA Quality Grading to try
and hide the loses. Coillte’s noble firs supplied to
France in are alleged to have so blackened
Ireland’s name that the export market was lost
to any Irish firms the following year. Price lists
distributed in England at the time are also said
to have made it impossible for Irish private firms
to compete. Coillte is no longer in the Christmas
tree market but the charge persists today with
alleged “dumping” by Coillte on the UK market
of vast numbers of Sitka spruce. Planting rates
in Ireland have fallen far beyond unrealistically
inflated Government predictions and conse-
quently the production of Coillte’s over-stocked
nurseries have been sold on the UK market, alleg-
edly at below cost prices.
Coillte hasn’t been the only Irish grower to
find that growing Christmas trees isn’t as easy as
it might look. While the spruce that now covers
almost % of Ireland grows well just about any-
where, it makes a poor Christmas tree as the spiky
needles quickly shed all over the floor – especially
in today’s centrally heated homes. Firs make the
best Christmas trees, staying green and fragrant
throughout the season. But firs can be more dif-
ficult to grow well, with provenance critical and
proper husbandry essential for a good crop. Even
a too heavy trunk can add unnecessary weight and
put off less sturdy customers, who seek a lighter
tree for ease of handling. Noble fir has proven to
be frost prone and subject to ‘current season nee-
dle necrosis’ turning the branches an unsightly
brown just before harvest time as well as funguses
spreading root rot. Nordman fir is fairing bet-
ter, but even the premier Irish grower, Emerald
Christmas trees, has produced less than half the
, trees projected years ago.
Christmas trees are cyclical in nature. It
takes seven to ten years to grow a tree and in part
because of the unfolding disasters that met the
first Irish growers, there is a shortage of trees
this year, not only in Ireland but right across
Europe. Even in Denmark, which began cultivat-
ing Nordman fir seed years ago, more than
% of their seed has to be imported from a polit-
ically unstable Georgia. The shortage has doubled
the price of these trees between and .
This encourages the cowboys in the parking lots
with their over-priced poor quality trees, turn-
ing customers off.
So what about trees in pots? Or renting
trees? Or even – gasp – plastic trees? The dis-
advantage of trees sold in pots is that many of
them are transplanted late on in their growth
cycle. The reduction in roots gives them a
poor chance of long term survival, even if
the changes in temperature and moisture
don’t do them in. Renting trees is now stand-
ard practice for commercial companies, and
they include decoration and removal. Some
of these are properly grown in containers and
kept on under optimum controlled conditions
from one year to the next – adding, of course,
to their carbon footprint. And plastic trees?
The plastic used in Christmas trees is the same
one used in plastic bags. The molecular bonds
that make plastic so durable make it equally
resistant to natural processes of degradation;
they can persist in landfills for hundreds of
years. Since the s, one billion tons of
plastic has been discarded and much of it has
ended up in the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’.
Until about years ago, lead was en essen-
tial component of the artificial tree, partic-
ularly in China, leading to concerns by US
Health authorities. Most trees are now made
of recycled PVC rigid sheets using tin as a sta-
bilizer. But are they ‘better’ for the environ-
ment? Kaj Ostergaard, the Chairman of the
Danish Christmas Tree Growers Association,
says that “compared to agriculture, we are the
good guys”, citing the lower application of fer-
tilisers to make his point.
The debate is ongoing. In February of this year
a Canadian study undertook to compare the ‘life
cycle analyses’ of artificial vs natural Christmas
trees. On an annual basis, the natural tree con-
tributes significantly less carbon dioxide emission
(%) than the artificial tree. They are roughly
equivalent in terms of human health impacts. The
artificial tree is almost four times better on ecosys-
tem quality but has three times more impacts on
climate change and resource depletion than the
natural tree. Nevertheless, because the impacts
of the artificial trees occur at the production stage,
and since it can be reused multiple times, if the
artificial tree were kept longer it would become a
better solution than the natural tree. It would take,
however, approximately years of use before
the artificial tree would become a better solution
regarding climate change.
My own family tradition includes a hand-
painted tree. Each Christmas Eve a roll of brown
paper was stretched on the floor and the poster-
paints came out. By the end of the evening, the
brightest and finest of trees was ready to hang on
the wall. Whatever you decide, it is now clear from
the study that, regardless of the chosen type of
tree, the impacts on the environment are negli-
gible compared to other greenhouse gas produc-
ers – the car, or the central heating. We may not
be able to go back to the old ways – pre -
in Ireland, where outbuildings were painted and
mistletoe and holly decorated the houses. But if
you turn your heating down, you’ll be doing your
tree a favour – and you’ll easily offset any carbon
footprint the tree brings with it. Then you can get
on with the Saturnalia with a clean environmen-
tal conscience.
“the impacts on
the environment
are negligible
compared to other
greenhouse gas
producers – the
car, or the central
heating”
PHOTOS: GETTY IMAGES
