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Winter has come early here in Nova Scotia this year. We had a couple of major snowfalls in November that melted off, but while we frequently don’t get snow that stays until after Christmas, especially here on the Atlantic coast, this week we have snow down that looks like it’s going to stick around, and there’s more falling. Here’s what it looks like out my window this morning. The lake froze over yesterday.

So it’s beginning to look lot like Christmas, and I spent part of the past couple of afternoons scouting around looking for a good Christmas tree. You might think that for someone with a 130 acre woodlot, covered mostly with balsam fir, finding a decent Christmas tree would be a piece of cake, but it isn’t. Nature has this redundancy thing going, in that firs, which naturally regenerate, tend to grow in clumps all jammy-packed together. Consequently, even though there are tens of thousands -- maybe hundreds of thousands -- of trees on our property, very few of them, at least the ones of Christmas tree size, are straight and evenly proportioned.

The secret of growing good Christmas trees is to thin the stands when the trees are seedlings, but unless you’re in the Christmas tree business, it’s hard to justify the time. Anyway, in my recces so far I’ve found one likely candidate, ironically within sight of my living room window.

I am a Christmas tree purist. I prefer a dark green balsam fir (Abies balsamea) with long needles and a fairly bushy shape, but one that grew naturally, the way God intended -- none of this artificial shape-shearing that commercial Christmas Tree growers do. Here’s one of our trees (2000) that I especially liked.

The Balsam Fir is, IMHO, the perfect tree for Christmas, with its soft dark green needles, symmetrical shape and distinctive aroma. The fragrant Balsam fir, as one Nova Scotia grower puts it, “IS” Christmas.

While spruce and pine are more valuable species for saw logs and paper pulp, the balsam fir is the mainstay of commercial Christmas tree culture in Nova Scotia. Christmas tree growing is an important industry here, with most of the roughly 2 million Christmas trees harvested each year being exported to the U.S.

One Nova Scotia Christmas tree grower, Lord’s Trees, has posted a downloadable Christmas Lot image as a Desktop background/wallpaper image.

The 32 ft. balsam fir that was erected next to the Ground Zero cross on the former World Trade center site this week, and which will be lit in a ceremony on December 10th, came from Lunenburg County, Scotia, which calls itself the “Christmas tree capital of the world.”

There is also another, much older Nova Scotia-U.S. Christmas tree tradition associated with a violent disaster. Today is December 6th, and on this date in 1917 a massive explosion nearly obliterated the city. At 8:45 a.m., two ships, the Imo and the Mont Blanc, collided in Halifax Harbour, causing the Mont Blanc to explode. The ship and its cargo of explosives were blown a mile high in what was at that time the world’s largest man-made explosion.

With half the city obliterated and many of its people dead and dying, Halifax needed help desperately. Trains from all over Canada and New England brought medical aid, food, clothes, building materials and laborers to rebuild the devastated city. Among the biggest sources of help were the state of Massachusetts, and the city of Boston which donated millions of dollars’ worth of aid and supplies and contributed volunteer assistance through the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee.

In gratitude, the people of Halifax presented Boston with one of the province’s finest trees to serve as the city’s official Christmas tree in Boston Common. And every year since, a special Nova Scotian tree is selected and shipped to Boston to show the province’s thanks for its neighbor’s help.

You can find out more about the Halifax explosion here:
http://www.herald.ns.ca/aboutus/hfxexplosion.html
and here
http://www.region.halifax.ns.ca/community/explode.html

The first record of a decorated Christmas was in Riga, Latvia in 1510, and the first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany in 1531.

And when Britain’s Queen Victoria married Germany’s Prince Albert in 1840, he brought the tradition to London. Pictures of the British Royal Family and their Christmas tree appeared in newspapers, and thousands of people in Canada, the United States, and England soon began decorating their own trees.

However, it’s very likely that many Germans who emigrated to the U.S. and Canada from Germany in the 1700s set up their own trees long before the British royals popularized the practice.

The first Christmas tree retail lot in the United States was reportedly started in 1851 in New York by Mark Carr. In 1856 Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, was the first President to place a Christmas tree in the White House. President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923.

Today, the top selling Christmas trees are Balsam fir, Douglas fir; Fraser fir, Noble fir, Scotch pine and White pine. In 2002, 32 percent of Christmas trees displayed in United States will be real trees; and 49% fake trees.

You can find out more Christmas tree facts here:
http://www.urbanext.uiuc.edu/trees/treefacts.html

And if you would like a virtual Christmas tree for your OS X Desktop or Dock, check out Christi’s Tree 2.0.1.

Christi’s Tree is simply a Christmas Tree for your Mac. It sits on your desktop or in your Dock to give your Mac that extra little bit of holiday cheer.

The tree has lots of great features, too. You can add decorations like cranberry garland, red Christmas balls, and even flashing lights. It works in your Dock, or as a floating window.

System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.0 or higher
 
Christi’s Tree is freeware  
   
For more information, visit:
http://www.yourhead.com/index.php?id=software/tree

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear