We’re entering Christmas season, when Christians in the U.S. celebrate with a clearly pagan ritual of celebrating a birth in Bethlehem with chopping down fir trees. Presumably this tradition began in northern Europe, unrelated to the middle east.

I propose instead of celebrating birth with death and mixing paganism in with Christianity, recognizing that cutting down trees was not likely ever appropriate, but not now.

• Are Christmas Trees Pagan? Inside The Origins Of The Evergreen Tradition
• Ancient History Of The Christmas Tree And Its Pagan Roots – How The ‘Forbidden’ Tree Survived Against All Odds
• History of the Christmas Tree: Pagan Origins

Look at this mess from last year. We don’t have to keep trashing the environment just because we used to. Can you show your love for your savior in more life-affirming ways? You don’t need a dead tree to spend time with family.

This tradition once started. We can start new ones—life-affirming ones. Here is what will happen to your tree within a month if you buy one. Can you think of something better?

Here’s a video of their fate:

Here are more:

Holy cow, the number of discarded trees keeps growing! Imagine, cutting down a small forest—killing trees to celebrate birth?!?—just to use for a few weeks. What happened to our consciences?

And these trees are only the ones people took the trouble to bring to the park. I imagine they’re a small fraction of the trees this neighborhood paid to kill.

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