Christmas trees: losing their magic?

Oh, Christmas tree, for as long as we can remember we've marvelled at "how lovely are your branches". But our love affair with you seems to have hit a rough patch.

Between seven and eight million Christmas trees are still sold in the UK each year, according to the British Christmas Tree Growers Association, but environmental concerns, thin margins and a possible shortage means we might rock around them less often in the future.

'Sorry state'

Christmas trees "began as a 16th-century German ritual" when "apparently" it was common practice to "hang Christmas trees upside down", said The Telegraph. The tradition was "imported to Britain by way of Prince Albert in the 1840s", where they usually stand the right way up.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Another British tradition is the Trafalgar Square tree that the citizens of Oslo donate to Londoners each year to say thanks for the war. However, tree surgeons had to "step in to replace dead and damaged branches" when last year's tree arrived after its 900-mile journey from Norway in "a rather sorry state", said The Telegraph.

Fungal festivity?

According to gardening experts, wet weather early this year led to fears that good quality trees "may be harder to come by this Christmas", said the Daily Express, with the "best spruce specimens snapped up early doors".

The excess moisture caused by wet and cool weather can create problems such as "fungal disease", which could take the sheen off the experience. So punters who "leave their tree shopping late could end up compromising on quality, while those buying in supermarkets may be saddled with an inferior fir".

Trees are also "likely to be more expensive this year" thanks to the "classic supply and demand" issue that the shortage will bring. With margins already as "thin as wrapping paper", it is already an "absurd world" for the Christmas tree farmer, said The Telegraph.

'Appalling rituals'

Compared to other "appalling rituals of Christmas", such as the "mechanised slaughter of turkeys", said The Telegraph, the cultivation of millions of trees may seem "comparatively benign" but it still "seems to attract undue angst".

There's now a "growing" debate around "whether it's appropriate to put up a Christmas tree at all", said BBC Countryfile. People question whether, "at a time of environmental loss and climate chaos", we should be "cutting down living trees for such a short period of indulgence"?

A YouGov survey in 2022 found that 54% of Britons considered an artificial tree to be more environmentally friendly. But it's estimated that a fake tree would need to be used for at least seven years for it to have a smaller carbon footprint than buying a real tree each year.

Nordmann firs are harvested at around 10 years old, when they are about two metres high, without enough time for "complex ecosystems to establish themselves", said Countryfile. If the trees are planted on wildlife-rich grassland or "at the expense of an existing woodland, the environmental cost is huge".

But a study published in the Annals of Applied Biology found that Christmas tree plantations offered "significant nesting and resting sites for farmland birds" and they pull "enormous quantities of carbon from the atmosphere", said Countryfile.

Meanwhile, according to the GWP Group, 14% of plastic trees are binned each year and they are virtually impossible to recycle. The carbon footprint of a fake tree is seven to 20 times that of a real tree, said the Carbon Trust.

So although it "may seem counterintuitive to support the annual culling of trees", said The New York Times, environmentalists "endorse them over the fake, petroleum-based versions" that are "shipped from half a world away".