This newsletter comes out every other Thursday and hopefully provides you with thought-provoking content about the mundane, wacky, and weird. I will be writing until the 75th edition. If you know someone who may enjoy the newsletter, you can share it here.
It’s not surprising that America has turned Christmas, a religious holiday into a consumer holiday. Long lines at the malls or anxiously waiting for a package to arrive in the mail are all par for the course. However, there is one part of Christmas that everyone loves and that is the Christmas tree.
Germany in the 16th century is widely credited as the creator of the Christmas tree. Martin Luther, the 16-century Protestant reformer,d first added lighted candles to a tree. “Walking toward his home on a winter evening, he was awed by the brilliance of stars twinkling amidst evergreens. To recapture the scene for his family, he erected a tree in the main room and wired its branches with lighted candles”.
Despite the clear fire hazard the Germans continued using candles on the Christmas tree for another two hundred years.
Today, Americans love Christmas trees, but we were late to the party. Many Americans in the 19th century still saw the Christmas tree as a pagan symbol and didn’t adopt it more broadly until the end of the 19th century. An early New York Times article said, “The German Christmas tree, a rootless and lifeless corpse —was never worthy of the day”. The turning point for the Christmas tree's acceptance came in 1846. The popular Queen Victoria and her German Prince Albert were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree.
Ever since then the Christmas tree market has been on fire. “By the 1890s Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and Christmas tree popularity was on the rise around the U.S. It was noted that Europeans used small trees about four feet in height, while Americans liked their Christmas trees to reach from floor to ceiling”. Today, 95 million Americans celebrate Christmas with a tree. We also do it big. It’s also big business for farmers.
Christmas tree farms come from 2 major sales sources:
U-Cut: This allows the public to cut down their own trees.
Wholesale: The farms cut, ship, and sell their trees in bulk to lots, retailers, and distributors.
About ⅓ of Christmas tree sales are via U-Cut, while wholesale makes up the majority of the market.
Wholesale Christmas trees are often sold at auctions where farmers bring their cut Christmas trees and then distributors and retailers bid for the trees. The largest Christmas tree market in the world is in Pennsylvania.
Neil Courtney (above) is the auctioneer for Buffalo Valley Christmas tree market in Pennsylvania.
On average, they auction off around 70,000+ trees and thousands of wreaths. If you bought your tree in a parking lot or from a major retailer, the lot likely bought it at an auction like Buffalo Valley’s. All of the trees they auction are real Christmas trees, but artificial trees have become more popular in recent decades.
Real vs Artificial?
I buy a real Christmas tree because I like the smell and feel of it. Getting a fake one feels like succumbing even further to the superficial aspects of a commercialized Christmas. Plus, I don’t have room to store a Christmas tree year-round in my apartment. However, I am in the minority as 82% of total Christmas trees are artificial, while real ones only make up 18%.
Here are four trends causing the rise in fake Christmas trees.
Real trees are a fire hazard. Almost every commercial or public Christmas tree is fake because they want to minimize risk.
Many people are allergic to Christmas trees.
Convenience - It packs down and can easily be stored and put back together the next year. There is no need to go to a Christmas lot every 12 months and strap a big tree onto the top of your car.
Artificial trees have gotten better. The plastic today is better than previous versions such as goose feathers, aluminum, and toilet bristles.
Artificial trees are increasing in popularity and the trend is likely to continue.
Where do these trees come from? In the US most real Christmas trees come from Oregon, North Carolina, and Michigan. Artificial trees most likely come from Yiwu, China which is nicknamed the “Christmas Town”. Yiwu produces 60% of the world’s Christmas decorations.
A factory in Yiwu where workers are painting Christmas tree “limbs” white.
Of the real Christmas trees, the Douglas Fir remains the most popular type of tree. Douglas Fir’s gained popularity because of its cone-like shape, density and its needles don’t easily dry out after you forget to re-water your tree. A Douglas fir takes 8-10 years before it is mature enough to be sold.
Christmas trees jumped in price in 2016 because the 2007 financial crisis was 9 years before. During the financial crises, farmers didn’t have enough resources to plant as many trees. In 2021, an average Christmas tree will run you $83. The main reason for the surge is higher transportation costs and general inflation.
Whether you decide to get an artificial or real Christmas tree, I hope it helps you get in the Christmas spirit🎄.
Boardgame I am loving
Wingspan- similar to Settlers of Catan but with beautiful bird designs. It won multiple best-designed board game awards.
TikTok just beat Google at the Internet
Given the internet is omnipresent in our lives, it is surprising how immature it is as an industry. Most of these companies were founded in the past two decades.
Tik Tok was released in September of 2016. In five short years, it soared to the number one hub on the internet(!). The average user spent 22 hours a month on the app. The internet is still rapidly evolving and I am confident this top 10 list will look different in 2030.
Reminder for the holidays - from The Onion.
Pic of the Week
My friend Jordan (left) invited us to an underground rave this past week. Here we are in our early 2000s gear before heading out.