Oh Tanenbaum, However Green Your Branches
The coolest thing I learned today is that there is a National Christmas Tree Association. I heard long ago that there’s an association for just about everything - and there are many goofy ones - but one for Christmas trees? Awesome!
This association that concentrates on one of the cornerstone decorations of Christmas offers great tips on picking out a tree, recycling trees, types of trees, the history of trees, fun stuff with trees … just about everything you’d want and need related to a tree. But most importantly, it also provides some safety tips related to Christmas trees. One of the most important tips is to use care in NOT overloading your outlets,
Overloaded electric outlets and faulty wires are the most common causes of holiday fires in residences - these types of fires can be just as dangerous with an artificial tree.
When we had children, my husband and I went from live trees to artificial. In fact this year we even graduated to a pre-lit tree (we want our marriage intact this time next year, especially after last year’s Christmas tree light fiasco). We made the change thinking that artificial trees were MORE SAFE. We do turn our tree off every night and typically don’t leave the lights on for extended periods of time if we’re not in the room with it. But it appears that tree fires are fairly rare - when there are fires at Christmas they are typically started by something else.
Too late for me to change back to a live tree, though. With luck on my side, I’ll keep my pre-lit, artificial tree for many years to come.
For your Christmas pleasure, here’s a puzzle from the National Christmas Tree Association.
