The Christmas Tree- What is Natural Anyway?

A different take on everyone's favourite tree!

‘Tis the season to be festive once again- but how about with a slight twist? There are plenty of articles out there talking about the origins and symbolism of the ever-popular Christmas tree. Pagan customs, Protestant Christian customs, Prince Albert, and the fire hazard of the original real candle decorations are all up for discussion.

But what about the physical Christmas tree itself. If you decide to bring a real evergreen into your life this Christmas, where does it come from? How was it grown, who grew it, and how far did it travel to end up in your home sheltering your presents (or acting as a cat climbing gym)?

Of course, this all depends on where you get your fir-y friend. Every garden centre or supermarket will source their stock from different places, and every Christmas tree farm will have a different way of doing things.

And, like most things, there are more complicated questions behind all this. Many people choose a real tree because it represents nature, reminding them of the outdoors and cold, snowy, forests. One of key bits of symbolism behind the Christmas tree is the idea of bringing evergreen vegetation into the winter home to remind you that the darkest days of the year are now over and that the light of the sun will soon be returning.

But what kind of nature does the Christmas tree really represent? Can we use this tradition to unpack another layer of human-nature interaction? Let’s find out!    

The Christmas tree farm begins

This article starts a little later than the super old custom of decorating with evergreen foliage. We’ll also start later than the ‘who actually introduced Christmas trees to the UK’ question (although spoiler alert: it wasn’t Prince Albert; it was Queen Charlotte!).

Where we want to be is 1901. This was the year the first Christmas tree farm was set up in the US when W. V. McGalliard planted 25,000 Norway spruce on his New Jersey farm. In the same year US president Theodore Roosevelt was actually attempting to influence people away from the Christmas tree out of concern for deforestation. Roosevelt was a committed conservationist who keenly felt the potential loss of forests at a time when most people would cut their Christmas trees down in the wild. Roosevelt’s two sons did not agree and teamed up with a conservationist to suggest ways of harvesting trees and protecting forests at the same time.  

But—despite Roosevelt’s views and an increase in Christmas tree farms from 1901 onwards—in the US at least up until the late 1930s and early 1940s, many people still preferred the trek into the woods to cut their own. However, demand was starting to outstrip supply, and let’s face it, not everyone wants to be lumberjack. In the US by the 1950s the scale of the commercial Christmas tree growing enterprise had grown substantially despite a slightly shaky start.

Now, in the early twenty-first century, some 98% of Christmas trees sold worldwide are from tree farms. These are large areas of land where trees are grown in regimented rows, with little undergrowth in between: a monoculture with one species of tree often taking centre stage. In Europe, Germany is the largest producer of farmed trees, followed by Denmark, Austria, France, Belgium, and the UK. Around 75 million trees are harvested a year; this is big business!

So, is a monoculture sustainable?

This piece isn’t here to give to give definitive answers on the environmental impact of your evergreen buddy. The Christmas tree farm is that classic juxtaposition of nature and commercialism: the commodification of the natural world for human consumption, and, like a lot of these crossovers, there are pros and cons (every year I read a few articles about it, and every year I come to no real conclusions).  

Christmas trees are now a horticultural crop. They are standardised and grown in a way that is profitable to the businesses that sell them, and their production reflects their growing market. Initially Christmas tree farms were on lower quality land, but this changed when it was discovered that soil quality and other elements can influence the look of the end product (the tree) and make consumers more or less likely to buy it. People expect certain aesthetic qualities from their tree—and growers want to make that happen. This can mean the use of damaging agricultural techniques that limit the development of a fully biodiverse ecosystem. For example: you probably wouldn’t appreciate a Norway Spruce full of weevils, but, but these little bugs are excellent food for frogs, hedgehogs, and birds, and so would be a key part of a natural forest. Pest management and insecticide use is an ongoing problem, requiring a careful balance and ongoing monitoring and research.    

Another key feature of Christmas tree farms is that they immediately replace felled trees, often at a two to one ratio; one tree cut down to go to a good home, two planted. This should be an obvious win- no deforestation, right? However, when you consider that most trees only grow for between seven and twelve years before they reach a height suitable for most people’s homes, you are not looking at creating mature forests with the full range of biological processes.  

And then we’ve got comparisons to the plastic alternative. The British Christmas Tree Growers’ Association compares real trees to their artificial counterparts, with clearly positive results for the real deal on carbon emissions and end-of-life recycling. Real trees absorb carbon and release oxygen as they grow and can be composted when we’re done with them (either leave them out on green bin day or, if you’re feeling brave and have a big enough green bin, hack them up and wrestle them into the bin yourself).   

But the argument that a Christmas tree farm is a carbon sink is also more complicated. The idea of a carbon sink is that it keeps carbon locked away in the long term. And really what we need is ‘long term’ to mean thousands of years, maybe more. Christmas trees that are harvested every decade or so will still release carbon after they have been disposed of: it’s a balance between the carbon they absorb and the carbon they emit and there is plenty of online debate to be had about this.

Whatever commercial Christmas tree growers say, a monoculture is not a ‘natural’ environmental feature. The option isn’t a Christmas tree farm or an empty space without any plant life at all. The space taken up by Christmas tree farms could potentially be used to foster woodland that better reflects the UK’s diverse plant life. Trees are certainly better than no trees but depending on the management practices of the Christmas tree farm, it’s certainly nowhere near a ‘natural’ woodland.

There is also the recognition that the ecological impact of the Christmas tree industry in Europe in particular is not well understood. It is an area of study that will no doubt become more important if the industry expands further.  

What is natural anyway?

People buy real trees because they want to bring nature home with them. You could see the festive season as the natural hinterlands (a fancy word for an area of land economically linked to a city or town) of the city crossing into urban space on a mass scale; the arrival of thousands of trees from managed forests across the country into our urban or suburban homes is a reflection of human-kind’s tangled relationship with nature.

Christmas tree growers will always plug their products as a green and natural alternative to the artificial plastic replicas that sometimes come pre-lit and dusted with ‘snow’.  And they make a good case. Tree farms can provide important habitats, they do absorb carbon, and a real tree certainly beats the use of fossil fuels to make something that will probably eventually end up in landfill and as microplastics.

But this is where the simple binary between natural and unnatural becomes less clear.

The UK’s most popular Christmas tree types, Norway spruce, Nordmann fir and Lodgepole pine, are not native to the UK. They were introduced to this country—albeit hundreds of years ago. The Nordmann fir is native to Turkey, Georgia, and Russia; the Lodgepole pine is native to America and was introduced to the UK in 1855; and the Norway spruce is native to Europe, specifically Scandinavia (although it may have been found around the UK in the last interglacial period) and was (re)introduced as early as 1548. These trees are an indisputable part of UK nature now, but they have been brought over and introduced to this nature to serve human needs and wants.  

Then there is the management of the Christmas tree farm itself. The end product is a tree that has been shaped and groomed to suit us humans (nice conical shape anyone?). They’ve got to fit in our houses and be aesthetically pleasing. It’s difficult to see how a commercial enterprise would benefit from replicating a true evergreen forest, with its cycles of growth and decay, its mushrooms and scrubby undergrowth and critters who may want to nibble on a valuable product.

So here is where we can pull one of environmental historian William Cronon’s ideas: his notion of first nature and second nature. For Cronon, first nature is the nature that exists without any human interference. It is the original nature, from prehuman times and is untouched landscape and wildlife. Second nature is how humans use this first nature to create value for themselves. It is what people build on top of first nature and how we shape first nature to fit our networks of value. So, a Christmas tree might have been originally part of first nature. However, if the species has been brought into the country, if it has been grown and raised in a monoculture on land that has been shaped by humans, if it has then been chopped and netted for human use, then you guessed it, its second nature.

And ultimately what is second nature other than a breakdown of the nature-culture divide. Christmas trees are no longer simply a product of nature, they are the product of human culture. It is human culture that has decided that a natural product needs to be grown on such a large scale and that it must meet certain aesthetic standards.   

Love your tree!

But back to the trees themselves. The smell of pine, the piles of needles underfoot (unless you get a ‘non drop’ tree) are all part of a nostalgic festive experience in the UK.

As demand increases year after year the Christmas tree has come to represent more than just Christmas vibes. So, what does this mean for the consumer? As I said earlier, this piece isn’t here to give answers, nor is it here to judge consumer choices. The idea is to give a little more nuance to our understanding of the system in which we make these consumer choices.

If you have a real tree this year, take a minute to top up its water, move it away from a direct heat source (they really don’t like central heating!) and think about its origins. I’m trying a potted tree for the first time after years of no tree at all (small house + large bookshelf problems) and I’m hoping I’ll have better luck keeping it alive than I’ve had with some of my houseplants.

More than anything and whatever you get up to, we at Elemental Tours hope that you enjoy the festive season!  

By Charlotte Coull
All photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Bibliography/further reading:

https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/hinterland - a definition of hinterland.

https://edgeeffects.net/natures-metropolis/ - an interesting interview with William Cronon on the 25^th anniversary of Nature’s Metropolis.

https://www.bctga.co.uk/news/Real-Christmas-Trees-are-Truly-Green - British Christmas Tree Growers Association, comparing natural and artificial trees.

https://qz.com/1165085/what-giant-christmas-tree-farms-look-like-from-space - American Christmas tree farms seen from space!

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/first-christmas-tree - It wasn’t Prince Albert.

https://www.rent-a-christmas.com/blog/article/cutting-christmas-a-history-of-christmas-tree-farms - history of Christmas tree farms in the US.

https://realchristmastrees.org/education/history-of-christmas-trees/ - a nice timeline.

https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/11/5/554 - a review of non-chemical weed control practices in Christmas tree production (abstract of an academic article- only the abstract is not behind a paywall).

https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-z-of-british-trees/norway-spruce/ - the Norway spruce.

https://nfs.unl.edu/documents/SpecialtyForest/Hallman.pdf - more information on US Christmas trees.

https://www.westonsawmillandnursery.co.uk/blog/how-we-grow-our-nordmann-fir-christmas-trees/ - growing Nordmann Fir Christmas trees.

https://www.zurich.com/en/media/magazine/2022/real-vs-artificial-what-is-the-most-sustainable-type-of-christmas-tree - a debate about the sustainability of real and artificial Christmas trees.

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/christmas-trees-fun-holiday-tradition-or-selfish-ritualized-eco-terrorism - a short but good discussion of the environmental issues behind Christmas trees in the US.

https://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/GRI/TheInstituteforGlobalFoodSecurity/institute-for-global-security-news/HowsustainableisyourChristmastree.html - an accessible discussion on Christmas tree sustainability from Queen’s University Belfast.

https://www.tilhill.com/resource-hub/blogs-and-articles/monoculture-plantations-in-the-uk/ - on monocultures.

https://www.forestryengland.uk/blog/how-norway-spruce-can-help-future-forests - the Norway Spruce and planning climate resilient forests.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11056-019-09767-0 - abstract for article on the effects of Christmas tree plantations for biodiversity.