Many months after Christmas, there were still many traces of a massive slaughter that had taken place in Bucharest around what is essentially a celebration of life – Christ’s birth.
Undoubtedly, the same happened in other capitals of the ‘civilised world’, although I bet they are better at covering up such crime scenes.
Every one or two little streets or every 400-500 meters on a large boulevard, there was such a tree corpse to be found, lying obscenely near garbage bins.
The images are just saddneing, not shocking. There was no blood, no stench of death, and surely no mourners around them. Nobody cared.
And how should anyone care, in a city immune to caring about the cohorts of beggars, stray dogs, lousy political leaders and so on?
Generally speaking, we’re not used to caring about anything else, but our senseless worries and hedonist aspirations in Bucharest. Maybe it’s the same everywhere else.
There’s no way that I could claim to be better than others for having decorated a plastic made-in-China Christmas tree…
What I feel the urge to confess is that the photoholic I simply couldn’t pass by these slain trees and not take pics of them.
Far from being a hysteric ecologist, I can’t help feeling the noose of progress tightening around my neck as I watch them.
Like any slaughters of such scale (including the industrial killing animals for human consumption) this is another token of the progressive world we live in.
I wonder if for people living some 100-150 years ago – before this tradition became a worldwide commercial success – it made any sense to cut so many trees.
Just for fun. Just for the sake of making Christmas more enjoyable. It’s but a sacrifice on the altar of a ‘Christmas spirit’ which has nothing to do with Christ.
Like almost everything else during the contemporary consumerist Winter Holidays Season that hasn’t got anything to do with Him.Well, I’d rather refrain from invoking religious reasons for taking action against the killling of trees for Christmas.
Sadly enough, they are present in many Othodox churches, along other so-called churches, shopping malls, public institutions, big and small firms, and homes.
It’s just that – be it from an ecological or just ethical perspective – I dislike this waste of tree life. Why should so many trees be chopped?
Who can correctly anticipate the volume of sales and guaranteee that there won’t be millions of trees cut worlwide, but remain unsold for Christmas?
Is there any environmentally friendly and economically sound solution for disposing of these trees and possibly turning them into something useful?
Indeed, big trees from city squares can be turned into something useful. But what about the countless little ones like those noticed by me throughout Bucharest?
They aren’t good for furniture, probably not for fuel either, nor for making paper. So what could be done with them?
As long as we were forced to use ecological light bulbs, why shouldn’t sellers and buyers be compelled to trade exclusively trees grown in Christmas tree farms?
I’d make cutting Christmas trees from forests (irrespective of who owns the forest), selling and buying them a serious crime, punishable by severe fines and/or imprisonment.
If the price of farmed Christmas trees skyrocketed, would that be a problem? More tree farms would mean more competition.
Such a restriction will be a boost for those manufacturing ecological Christmas trees, as I’d also forbdid unrecyclable plastic trees. Would anyone agree with me?