Last Friday was the eve of Epiphany (January 6), or the 12th day after Christmas. According to tradition, you'll suffer bad luck if your tree and decorations aren't removed by this date. So what happens to all of those abandoned trees? I'd never considered their fate until today when, quite by chance, I discovered the answer to this question. This morning I took a different route to work and stumbled across an enormous pile of discarded Christmas trees, several metres high, heaped on a large traffic island. Local residents had clearly been working all weekend to ensure their good fortune.
The size of the pile stunned me. According to the British Christmas Tree Grower's Association (yes, there really is one) more than eight million trees are sold every year. Local authorities in England and Wales recycle about two million of them, leaving six million to be dumped or burned in early January. In fact, London's rubbish output rises by ten percent over this period as people discard trees and festive litter.
Garry and I took down our (artifical) Christmas tree and decorations over the weekend. Hopefully luck will remain on our side even though we missed the midnight deadline on Friday. The house looks surprisingly bare now. I never thought I'd miss fresh holly and tinsel quite so much.
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