Photos: Delighting in holiday light shows Come January 1, the Christmas ornaments come down, but the lights and the golden glow remain. Just as Warner had mentioned, I found hundreds of accounts of people who had switched to an artificial tree to extend the cozy vibes. Others have taken a unique approach: “We grew a bigass rosemary plant and put lights on it for this reason,” one Tree Keeper told me on Twitter. Some are coping in their own way, by buying potted Christmas trees-an eco-friendly, nonseasonal alternative. Some have succumbed to social pressure and are mourning the loss of their sapling friends. Our ranks even include celebrities, such as the legendary singer-songwriter John Prine, who kept a Christmas tree up all year in his studio (“We’d turn all the lights off and just sing to the Christmas tree,” he told GQ in 2018). I started snooping around online for more evidence of like-minded Tree Keepers, and I soon found that we are legion. According to Warner, the second-most-popular tree sold by the artificial-tree manufacturer Treetopia is a bold conical creation that is bright orange, like the sun. Others are buying trees that can change with the seasons, and Valentine’s Day and Halloween trees are sprouting up online. There’s also a growing market of tree shoppers, Warner said, who are buying expensive minimalist trees and displaying them like modern art. “And people are realizing that having them around is a wonderful, uplifting thing.” (Warner also stressed that year-round trees must be artificial and that keeping a natural, cut tree for more than a month poses a serious fire danger, even if you constantly water your tree.)Īrtificial trees have become hugely popular in recent years. “We so desperately need that light in our lives these days,” she said. Warner also assured me that I was not alone and that people are leaving their artificial trees up longer and longer-sometimes year-round. She said that the Christmas-tree industry has seen a substantial uptick in sales during the pandemic years, even despite supply-chain challenges. “It’s been such a difficult few years for everyone,” Jami Warner, the executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, told me. And while plenty of people out there are embracing normalcy, millions more with lower risk tolerance are hunkering down to protect themselves or loved ones or to keep the hospital system from straining. The holiday comedown was hard enough before COVID stresses, variant surges, and school closures. Right now, that’s more challenging than ever. It’s about finding ways to make it through the winter doldrums. But this isn’t about Christmas or Hanukkah or any specific celebration. I’m not really religious, and the excessive commercialization of the holiday season stresses me out. I’m not looking to strain my county’s power grid with an excessive use of kilowatt-hours. I don’t play Christmas music in July or have giant inflatable Santas strewn across my lawn. Listen, I’m not some sort of holiday weirdo. It is time we institute a new practice of keeping up our trees and our lights while we ride out the winter months. There is no reason to embrace the new year in darkness. And so I propose we put an end to this cruel practice.
Yes, the holidays are over, but the cold, dark days of winter are far from done. The decision to take down our holiday decorations after New Year’s is an arbitrary act of seasonal austerity. It is a bleak scene, made all the worse by the fact that it is unnecessary. Read: Have yourself a million little Christmases Now my street is an evergreen graveyard with damp, sickly looking pines discarded by the side of the road, half buried in the driven slush. Two weeks ago, my street was a Griswoldian wonderland with twinkling lights silhouetting the eaves of my neighbors’ houses and robust-looking conifers standing proudly in their windows. If you live in one of the 94 million homes or apartments that purchased or displayed a tree this holiday season, then maybe you feel the same melancholy that I do now.
I am, of course, talking about my Christmas tree (RIP). When I stare at this hole, I begin to feel as if a light has gone out in the world. The space, which once radiated a hopeful glow, now feels hollow. Rearranging the furniture somehow only makes the hole grow. We’ve tried to cover it up, but nothing seems to work. Right now, there is a hole in my living room.
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