The Life of a Christmas Tree
I never experienced Christmas in my childhood so the tradition of having a real tree decorated inside of a house was unknown to me. Living in Hungary for years, the pile of trees lying around the streets after Christmas made me wonder. Where these trees come from, how they relate to the feast of love and what happens to them after the festivities are over. So I followed the Christmas tree through its motions of survival till its very end.
I learnt that evergreen trees symbolized eternal life already for the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. In the pagan tradition evergreens were believed to scare away the devil in wintertime. The tradition was then converted to Christianity. Legends say that it might have been Martin Luther who first added lighted candles to a tree inside his house to recapture God's presence in nature to his family.
Today there are about a billion spine, spruce and fir trees produced worldwide to supply millions around the world with a Christmas spirit. Lots of land used, CO2 emitted to air just to have that Christmas spirit sitting in our own houses.