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Last weekend I got this year's Christmas tree in. 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 fir trees on our property, very few of them, at least the ones of Christmas tree size, are straight and evenly proportioned. However, happily, I found a very nice tree not more than 100 feet from our front door, that I hadn;t ralized was there. A bit of an anti-climax to the anticipated hunt -- it took me about three minutes to find it -- now on its stand in our living room.
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.
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 - let alone one made in China from plastic and aluminum.
The Balsam Fir is 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. Well, not really, but the Christmas tree is a very enjoyable cultural tradition.
Another Nova Scotia Christmas tree grower, Lord's Trees, has posted a downloadable Christmas Lot image as a Desktop background/wallpaper image. Unfortunately, it's low-res for today's monitors. You can find it here:
http://www.lordstrees.com/wallpaper.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.
While I'm not a fan of full-size artificial Christmas trees, I do like the virtual ones you can have on your Mac Desktop. Here are some Christmas trees for the Mac.
X-MasTree 1.3 - A Christmas Tree for your Mac
X-MasTree is a small (or medium, or large) floating Christmas tree for your desktop. Since YourHead software, maker of Christi's Tree, seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
Double click the icon to launch. There are many options, including which color lights to display, lighting modes (static, blinking or fading), a few ornaments, and a badge displaying days left until Christmas. WARNING: setting the lighting mode to "fade" will beat the living snot out of your CPU.
If you are familiar with browsing application bundles, you can add your own custom ornaments to X-MasTree. Simply create a transparent image 200 x 275 pixels and draw your custom ornaments on that. Make sure to save the file as a TIFF image with transparency turned on and LZW compressed. The file name must be either "CustomTop.tif" or "CustomBottom.tif", or both. "CustomTop" images are drawn above all other ornaments and lights, and "CutomBottom" images are below all other ornaments and lights. Now place the image file in the "Resources" folder of the X-MasTree application bundle. Note: it may help to use one of the tree images (Tree0.tiff) from the resource bundle as a guide for placing your ornaments around the tree.
If you want to hide the custom ornaments but don't want to remove them from the bundle, open up the terminal and type in:
defaults write com.stimpsoft.xmastree _drawCustomObjects -integer 0
and to turn them back on:
defaults write com.stimpsoft.xmastree _drawCustomObjects -integer 1
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.4.x or higher
X-MasTree is freeware
X-MasTree is 159% Freeware. X-MasTree may be freely distributed, as long as no fees are collected for it.
For more information, visit:
http://www.jschilling.net/sw_xmastree.php
Christi's Tree 2.1 Desktop Christmas Tree W/Christmas Countdown In Dock
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 that sets you apart from all the PC weenies out there.
The tree has lots of great features. You can add decorations like cranberry garland, red Christmas balls, and even flashing lights. It works in your dock, or as a floating window. And best of all, it's free. Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas!
This is Christi's Tree with the cranberry garland and the red Christmas balls. If you can see that the balls are actually tiny glassy aqua-style balls.
This is Christi's Tree configured with no decorations exceptthe star on top. It's nice and simple. Just a tree.
This is Christi's tree configured with everything. It's even got the flashing lights -- although they look better when they're actually going. This screenshot makes them look a bit more psychedelic than maybe they really are.
New in this version:
• Now shows the number of days until Christmas in the dock.
System requirements:
• Mac OS X 10.0 or higher
Christi's Tree is freeware
Provisionally distributed by
http://www.jschilling.net/sw_xmastree.php (scroll about 1/3 down the page for link)
TreetopLights 2.3 Desktop Christmas Tree And Animated Lights
TreetopLights is an AppleScript Studio application that places a Christmas tree on the desktop and holiday lights on the menubar or screen edges. The desktop tree can be decorated with blinking or fading lights, ornaments, a treetop star, and perhaps some snow. The ambient lighting can be controlled for the appearance of a dimly or brightly lit room, and the transparency and size of the tree can be set to keep it out of the way, or set the perfect holiday mood. The optional but festive menubar lights can blink or glow to decorate the menubar, or even go around the screen. A countdown timer displaying days until Christmas and the twelve days of Christmas is also included for on-tree display. There's also an option to send a Christmas greeting through Apple's Mail application. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
New in version 2.3:
• Recompiled on Leopard to improve Leopard compatibility
• Santa Preferences (Show Icon Ornaments, Show Tree Snow, Santa Speed, Random Broken Bulbs, Santa & Snowman Timers) are now available by default in preferences
• Added option to show lights over the screen saver when the screen saver is running (requires Mac OS X Tiger & up)
• Icon Ornaments are now functional as mini-launchers (double click icons to open applications)
• Icon Ornaments and Christmas Greeting images are now stored along with custom lights in TreetopLights folder in Application Support folder
• Fixed some issues with restoring light preferences between launches
New in version 2.2:
• Universal build compatible with both Intel & PowerPC Macs
• reduced cpu usage overall and for individual animations
• fixed some issues with drawing screen lights and spanning screens
• fixed some issues with retaining preference settings for lights & tree
• added snowman... command-click the desktop tree for the snowman
• added option for broken bulbs for screen lights... click on santa or control-click on snowman for options
• added options for automatic appearances of santa & snowman... click on santa or control-click on snowman for options
Changes in Version 2.1:
• fixed an issue that would prevent custom light animations (chase/alternate patterns) from appearing in the animation menus for the tree lights & screen lights
• fixed an issue that would prevent the Christmas countdown display from appearing on the tree & dock icon
• the show countdown option now controls both the tree & dock icon countdown display... choose setup to apply individual options for the countdown display
• fixed some light display issues with spanning screens
• disabling the tree now stops tree animation to reduce cpu usage (about 50% of both lights & tree)
• added new screen lights: Apples
• slowed down Santa... click on Santa for additional options!
New in Version 2.0:
• Added the following options for the desktop tree: gold ornaments, popcorn garland, tinsel garland (with tinting option)
• Added the option to hide the desktop tree
• Added option for addition of custom lights for both the desktop tree and screen lights
• Also added the option for custom animations for both the desktop tree lights and screen lights
• Added option to set the animation speed of both the desktop tree lights and screen lights
• Added option to show the countdown display on the dock icon
• Added additional display options for the countdown display (striped text, transparency)
• Improved spanning screen support for the screen lights... any 2 screen configuration should now work
• Improved many of the graphics and increased the default resolution of the tree graphics
• The Christmas email option now includes a single image with the current state of the desktop tree
• Changed the application to a foreground process (now shows dock icon & menubar)
• Reduced the cpu usage (about 50%)
Please Note: TreetopLights will only run under Mac OS X 10.3 or later.
System support:
PPC/Intel
Free
For more information, visit:
http://www.freerangemac.com/
Christmas Tree Creator 2004 Makes Animated Christmas Trees
Christmas Tree Creator '04 is the latest version of the previous Christmas Tree Creator software (formally from Fishback Research).
Use Tree Creator to create fun digital Christmas trees by adding drag-and-drop ornaments and lights. Apply the editing tools to get everything just the way you want it, then share your creations by printing greeting cards, posters, emailing friends, or viewing your trees as animated screen savers.
New in this version:
Many improvements over 2002 edition.
System requirements:
- Mac OS X 10.3.x or higher
Despite the name, this is the current version.
Christmas Tree Creator '04 is freeware
For more information, visit:
http://www.spindriftsw.com/
Christmas Tree Bounce 1.0 Bouncing Christmas Tree Screen Saver
A new Mac OS X screen saver that simply takes an image of a basic Christmas Tree and uses gravity to bounce it on the screen (various times).
The screensaver is small (116 KB) and uses very little system resources.
In theory you can edit the package of the Screen Saver and replace the tree.png file with your own file (keep the name the same though, and be aware of the dimensions to make sure it doesn't look odd). I've tried this and it does work.
System requirements:
This saver should work with 10.4 onwards, but only really guarantees 10.4.9 onwards.
Got a YouTube Video of what the saver looks like, however if you go to the youtube site and click on the 'watch in high quality' little link below the video on the right you get a high quality version.
System support:
PPC/Intel
Free
For more information, visit:
http://www.opanoid.com/index.php?view=20081208231137
Charles W. Moore
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