As he stood there, directly in front of the Frauenkirche, which radiates magnificently over the whole of Dresden, he seemed particularly bald. The branches were not particularly evenly distributed around the trunk and the needle dress was airy rather than magnificent. The Dresden Christmas spruce on the Neumarkt is just one of 14 trees on the large square, and yet it occupied many people.
Dresdeners, tourists, the tree was even called “sprucetitled. In the meantime, the organizers of the Christmas market have reacted and beefed up the tree by screwing additional branches to its trunk. The spruce was not accidentally chosen. It was intended to convey a message. It symbolized the poor state of the Saxon forests, had Cathleen Janotte from the organizer “Advent on the Neumarkt”. German press agency explained.
A Christmas tree as a sign of the crisis, in keeping with the zeitgeist, but apparently not everyone likes too much reality in the run-up to Christmas.
The Dresden scandalous tree grew in Saxon Switzerland. Carolin Werthschütz from the Sachsenforst state enterprise says: “Things are not looking good for Saxony’s forests. Bark beetles, severe forest fires and extreme drought are leaving their mark.” Only in the summer had fires destroyed large areas of forest. Werthschütz therefore supports the decision to set an example at the Christmas market with the light spruce. “It’s good when people are made aware of the problems.”
Sachsenforst sells around 20,000 Christmas trees every year. The blue spruce, Nordmann fir or pine usually grow in monocultures on specially designated areas, such as under high-voltage lines. Municipalities or cities can also order larger copies for public spaces. Werthschütz says that there are always trees among them that do not correspond to the usual ideal of beauty.
After complaints in Neu-Ulm, a tree was completely replaced
A similar controversy as in Dresden has also occurred in the Neu-Ulm district of Pfuhl in the past few days. But even there, the courage to be ugly did not prevail: some passers-by found the Christmas tree from the urban forest so unsightly that they complained. As a result, employees from the municipal construction depot replaced the tree.
The same fate almost happened to the fir tree in the neighboring district of Burlafingen, only the intervention of several local associations saved it. Sandra Lützel from the city of Neu-Ulm can only speculate as to why Christmas trees polarize the population so much: “Christmas trees have always been a very emotional topic.”
In any case, there are discussions about crooked Christmas trees in public places worldwide. Cities like Rome and Montreal (each in 2017), Erfurt (2018), London (2019), New York, Vienna (both 2020) and Frankfurt (2020 and 2021) have already struggled with this.
But wouldn’t it be time to rethink the ideal of beauty for Christmas trees?
In 2020 (photo) and 2021 there were discussions about the Christmas tree on the Römerberg in Frankfurt.
(Photo: Arne Dedert/dpa)
“I find it really difficult to say what exactly beautiful means in the case of Christmas trees,” says at least Sandra Lützel from the city of Neu-Ulm. “It’s just a matter of taste.” She didn’t find the tree in Pfuhl all that ugly. Especially since eight of the 19 trees set up in Neu-Ulm had been donated by citizens who wanted to get rid of spruces and firs from the garden. Sustainability instead of waste.
In Dortmund, the Christmas tree consists of a thousand fir trees
The advocates of the Disney Christmas tree should be said: Many trees today are more appearance than reality. As in Dresden, help is often given to maintain the illusion of the perfect tree. Dortmund even adorns itself with a more than perfect example. The candlelight is deceptive, because the 45 meter high beauty did not grow naturally.
A scaffolding outlines the shape, more than a thousand red spruces from the Sauerland planted especially for this purpose are stacked on top of each other in a one-month procedure and then decorated, revealed the organizer of the local Christmas market West German General Newspaper.
Incidentally, neither in Sachsenforst nor in Neu-Ulm are they worried about getting rid of the imperfect Christmas trees. Apparently, more and more people are turning to unusual specimens. And if a tree does not actually sell for aesthetic reasons, it is processed into decorative sticks or firewood. In any case, Sandra Lützel is certain of the dismantled Pfuhler tree: “It will still find its purpose.”