The tree must go!
Every year again - the meaningful line from an Advent song reflects what is going on in people's minds. Rituals, traditions or ingrained recurring compulsions to act, no matter what you call it - we simply can't get out of the maelstrom of the Christmas season.
And the industry doesn't make it easy for us either. They invoke the expectations of consumers, who in turn shrug their shoulders: of course we consume when and because it is offered to us.
The annual mill of consumer society grinds on relentlessly
Some retail sectors make half of their annual turnover in December alone. So why do without it? The fact that parcel services complain somewhat half-heartedly about not being able to keep up with deliveries and that the largest, originally state-owned logistics service provider has been recommending for years that private Christmas parcels be sent by the end of November at the latest so that they arrive before the festive season because commercial senders are favoured for reasons of pricing policy alone shows the limits of a system that is not attuned to demand.
Gift wrappings will certainly not attract attention before Advent, because biscuits and decorations for Christmas are already smiling at us in the discounters and supermarkets in late summer. It's only a matter of time before department stores start transforming their shop windows into a winter wonderland with spray snow and artificial fir trees in September. Because outside in nature we will hardly ever see anything like that (see: the desire for a white Christmas). Presumably, however, department stores that are not limping along on the second leg of online sales will no longer exist by then.
In Australia, the end of December is high summer, and the tradespeople there, all descendants of British prison colonies, are doing it: Foam snowmen, mounds of cotton wool with pointed green plastic triangles and silhouettes of flakes sprayed on the windows create a contemplative mood, while tourists in swimming trunks and slippers stroll past the shop displays, licking ice.
Climate change is to blame
Climate change, as the catastrophe of global warming rolling over us like an avalanche is euphemistically called, is the cycle of hell par excellence:
Winters are getting warmer and warmer. Christmas trees are planted, only to be cut down and placed by the roadside after three years, so that consumerist city dwellers can cart them home and put them back on the roadside, decorated and undecorated, another three weeks later. There they are collected by volunteers who take them to recycling centres in the sparse forest, where the needling sad remains of the festive season are shredded, serving as the basis for the next generation of Christmas trees. That's three cycles at once, how can you break that?
But the perfect solution is already in front of us on a silver platter: if the winters get warmer and warmer, we will have to heat less. And if we heat less, lessCO2 will be emitted into the ozone layer, which is known to be solely responsible for global warming. Then the winters will be colder again and we can use the Christmas trees for heating so as not to push global warming again. The ecological balance of a three-year-old Christmas tree (i.e. the ratio ofCO2 absorbed toCO2 emitted during combustion) may not be optimal, but the scent of the needles is worth it.