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Oh you may crow about the loss of life in the turkey population at Thanksgiving or bay about the wearing of animal skins (as I saw some people were doing on the Beeb news site the other night), but if you are at all sensitive to the sad plight of other species under the fell Hand of Man, spare a thought, during this the month of Christmas, for the Christmas-tree, and for Sudden Christmas-tree Death Syndrome or, as it’s commonly alphabetised, SCTDS.
We all know the indications of SCTDS:
“Hi honey I’m home. ’Tis the season of joy and good will so I had them go out and slaughter a tree for you, let’s add insult to injury by chucking some cheap ornaments over it and laughing at it while it decomposes,”
or the even worse traditional, or redneck, version where the whole family go out to the forest to cut their own tree, frenziedly hacking through the living timber with a woefully inadequate hatchet, splattering the children with their poor victim’s life-sap. Yeugh! It’s too horrible to contemplate! But we must!! We must be aware and we must contemplate and then eradicate this blot on our seasonal escutcheon.
Think, think, for but one moment from your busy lives, of the life of a typical Christmas-tree: growing peacefully among its friends on a mountainside in Oregon, it suddenly discovers what that funny buzzing sound was, as the man from the Oregon Chainsaw Massacre and Christmas-tree Company lurches towards it almost certainly wearing a ski mask or even a hockey mask.
Unable to run away, or in fact to move at all (apart from a slight swaying in the breeze) rooted to the spot with terror, the poor Christmas-tree can but await its fate, quivering, till it is hacked up and hurled down, subject to SCTDS, and then even more horribly, forced to become the subject of such demeaning advertisements as:-
“For a mere $34.95 plus shipping and handling we will deliver a freshly cut U.S.D.A. premium quality Douglas-fir Christmas-tree to your door. Other sizes available on request (Void where prohibited by law.)”
And then, for the so-called ‘Live’ Christmas-trees fate is not much kinder. Dragged from their wide, wild [sings] born-free,-free-as-the-elm-grows open spaces to the cramped confines of a tub and the terrifying claustrophobia of someone's living-room, bereft, and leaving behind family, friends and some of the more important components of their root system. Is it any wonder that the poor trees pine: that they get the dead needle?
What is my solution to the evil plague of Sudden Christmas-tree Death Syndrome?
Well, first off, note that this is an almost totally seasonally determined condition---one seldom sees Christmas-trees suffering SCTDS in this way in, say, mid-July.
And then again, and this is the key to the whole solution; research from several double-blind studies has shown that the possession of SCTDS prone Christmas-trees correlates strongly to the presence of young children. So it seems to me only fair that the cause should be the cure; so, finally, my suggestion is that if you happen to have a spare child or so it is easy to persuade them (and I’m sure you know how to do that … “Santa will pass our chimney by and you’ll only get coal if you don’t...”---yes, you know how to do it!) persuade them of the advantages and the fun, fun, fun of standing in a corner absolutely still, draped in tinsel and ornaments until well after Christmas. And remember that you’ll not only be saving a life, but that it’s much less messy than using a tree since children don’t tend to shed much at this time of year.
Cheerio for now
from
Richard Howland-Bolton
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