Magical for some, controversial for others. The Christmas tree does not leave the municipalities and their inhabitants indifferent. In 2020, Pierre Hurmic, just elected mayor of Bordeaux, announced his desire not to adorn his city with a “dead tree”. “To keep the magic of Christmas without wasting public money”, the ecologist elected this year for a work in the shape of a cone 11 meters high, 5 meters in diameter in its base and weighing two tons.
This creation by Arnaud Lapierre will be installed on the town hall square (inauguration on the 11th). The creation of the artist-designer is in recycled steel, and offers facets of one-way mirrors (from recycled glass) offering games of reflections. To see if this glass tree will make Bordelais forget their pine green.
At the other end of France, in Strasbourg, we pride ourselves on being the capital of Christmas. Difficult then not to have a majestic conifer on the place Kléber (30 meters high). His arrival is an event. Its illumination (7 km of garlands) also. “It is the lighthouse, the backbone, the symbol, the light on. It is the central point of Strasbourg, Capital of Christmas, ”enthuses Guillaume Libsig, deputy mayor EELV Jeanne Barseghian. Do without a tree? “It has never been studied,” says the municipal team. In Alsace, the Christmas tree has a value, an importance. We have texts at the Humanist Library which say that this tradition has existed for five hundred years ”.
No controversy either in Montpellier, or 500-year-old text, but a 14-meter-high Christmas tree installed on the Place de la Comédie. Coming from the Morvan, the first producing region of Christmas trees in France, the tree after the end of year celebrations will be transformed to create nesting boxes for birds. In Strasbourg, we come back to it, the 2020 tree had been recycled into musical instruments.
Nantes does nothing like everyone else
Rennes also made the choice of a Morvan fir but a little bigger: a 14.5 meter spruce. It is decorated this year with 72 balls, 10 snowflakes, 10 stars and garlands. Its arrival coincided with the landing of forty other conifers in the main shopping streets of the city.
We also multiply the fir trees in Nice where there is not “just one emblematic tree. […] For years, there is that of the town hall and those in front of hospitals, 9 meters, ”says the city. In total, there are 44 in the town. And these conifers from Haute Corrèze will end up being chopped into firewood, compost or mulch. A fir merry-go-round is also present on the Christmas market.
This is also the case in Nantes, Place Graslin, where, in recent years, a merry-go-round in the shape of a giant fir tree has appeared. This metallic and luminous conifer is the tree that does not hide the forest. Indeed, there is no tradition of a large Christmas tree in the city center, without specific explanation. However, the city is concocting a hearty program of end-of-year festivities.
Christmas tree in kit or flashy
In Toulouse, we also rely on Morvandelle production to leave thorns everywhere. But the Pink City is daring to use a giant Christmas tree in a kit! Installed on the new ramblas and culminating at 20 meters high, the XL conifer is in fact a pyramid of 400 smaller, natural fir trees. This multiplication had moved the environmental opposition in 2019, at the time of his arrival. In 2021, no controversy for the moment. Quite out of the way, it seems to have become commonplace and, contract obliges, it will come back for one last lap in 2022.
In Paris, City of Light, we rely more on the illuminations of the Champs-Elysées in particular than on the Christmas tree. And when the municipality installs trees, they are “two sparkling forests on the forecourt of the Hôtel de Ville and the Place de la Bastille”. As we love what shines in the capital, tourists and Parisians flock to Galeries Lafayette to admire the Christmas tree. flashy of the department store which has swapped balls and garlands for barley candies, dolls, a robot dog or a blue rabbit with glasses in the shape of a console controller.