THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 18760, 26 December 1930, Page 6

THE CHRISTMAS TREE

MILLIONS SOLD EVERY YEAR. The origin of the Christmas tree custom is lost in the mist of antiquity. It is probably a relic of the tree worship which formed the basis of several pagan religions of Northern Europe, just as the mistletoe and holly customs are survivals of rites practised by the Druids. Whatever its origin, the Christmas tree is now an established institution in Europe, Canada, America and many other countries. And the custom is far from dying out. Every succeeding year, more and more Christmas trees are bought. The growing of them, and their subsequent sale has developed into a big business. Christmas trees are usually young specimens of Norway spruce, but other coniferous trees, such as balsam and Scotch fir, are sometimes used. They achieve about the same ages as the children for whose entertainment they are bought. A tree four feet high would be about ten years of age. Sometimes they are grown from seed specially for the Christmas market, and sometimes they are forest thinnings. Commercially grown trees are sprouted in seed beds just like any garden vegetable. At the age of two years, when they are nothing more than fragile, feathery plants, they are transplanted to trenched rows. They remain there, with the soil heaped well over their roots, for another two or three years. They are then hardy enough bo face their final removal, which is to a well ordered plantation where thousands of trees of various k sizes are waiting for the advent of the

Christmas that will see them uprooted or cut.

Forest thinnings are self-sown trees which have fought a hard struggle for existence in the shady depths of some forest. If they were left to grow unchecked, they would hinder the growth of valuable timber trees. Many of the seedlings and saplings would die from lack of sunlight and sustenance, and their rotting branches would become breeding places for fungi and insects, which would eventually attack and harm even the giants of the forest. Of the survivors, a few would develop into valuable timber trees of their own accord, but many would never be anything more than stunted cripples. Good forestry demands that the saplings shall be thinned out 1 annually, and, as, in the case of Christmas trees, the things can be sold at a good price, good forestry is good business. Specially grown trees are usually better than those that grow in a forest. The former are likely to have a better shape than the latter. English Christmas trees, when not i growm in England, are imported from! Norway, Germany and Holland. In Germany the cult of the Christmas tree has reached a very high stage of development. There is scarcely a home in Germany which cannot display a decorated tree at Yuletide. In England, a Christmas tree is found in one house out of every three. In America the proportion is somewhat lower, one home in four, but her larger population makes America the largest user of Christmas trees in the world. Every year about ten million Christmas trees are bought by American parents. Most of them are homegrown, although Canada supplies some. Big business methods have

even invaded the Christmas tree industry in America. Special brands of trees are advertised, and each of these is sold with a label certifying its origin. First favourites in the public taste are trees cut from the national forests by the United States Forest Service.

Owing to the cost of transport, Canada finds it difficult to compete in the American market, but she nevertheless manages to export some three millions of trees every year, some of them to points as far distant as Chicago and New Orleans. Of these, half-a-million come from Quebec, putting some £20,000 in the pockets of the exporters, for what was regarded some years ago as useless slash only fit for starting stove fires. Some Canadians have definitely set aside a few acres of poor land solely for the purpose of cultivating Christmas trees. Once planted, they need little attention, and as the average produce of an acre is worth from £SO to £6O, Christmas provides the owners with a substantial “gift.”