10 Ways Your Christmas Tree Is More Lit Than You Think

Christmas trees don’t do much—or do they? Conifers have a secret life that few people are aware of. Once upon a time, dinosaurs gazed upon them, while the leaves of modern varieties contain real gold. Christmas trees can also be surprisingly dangerous, causing hundreds of road accidents, and fire-retardant chemicals make them more flammable. With that, here are 10 facts to ponder while trimming your Christmas tree!

Related: 10 Festive Facts about ‘A Christmas Carol’ and Its Adaptations

10 Christmas Trees Are Ancient

In 2012, a study revealed that the conifer genome hasn’t changed much over the past 100 million years. Indeed, today’s conifers and tree fossils from the dinosaur era share a strong resemblance. The genetic stability had an unusual consequence. Christmas trees couldn’t really evolve as freely as other life forms, and ultimately, the conifer family now includes about 600 species.

In comparison, the study’s researchers also looked at the evolutionary arc of flowering plants, which shared a common ancestor with conifers about 300 million years ago. Unlike the trees, flowering plants underwent major changes over the 100 million years that conifers remained genetically “quiet.” Due to this, their numbers exploded, with over 400,000 species of flowering plants in existence today.^[1]

9 The Humblest Christmas Tree

In 2023, an artificial Christmas tree was sold at Hanson’s Auctioneers. It didn’t look like much. Standing at just 31 inches (78 cm) tall, it had 25 branches, a smattering of fake berries, and half a dozen candleholders. Dubbed the “humblest Christmas tree in the world,” there was nothing humble about its final bid—a whopping £3,411 (over $4,000).

The auction house believes that nostalgia played a role in the profitable sale. Originally purchased for pennies, the 103-year-old tree was a gift to Dorothy Grant in 1920, when she was eight years old and living in Leicestershire, England. In 2014, she passed at the age of 101, and her 84-year-old daughter, Shirley Hall, inherited the small tree. Shirley decided to auction it off to ensure that the next owner would be someone who really wants the tree and to preserve this rare memento from the 1920s.^[2]

8 Pathologists Protect the Industry

Freshly cut Christmas trees are a massive industry in the United States. Most of the roughly 33 million trees sold every year come from plantations in the Pacific Northwest region and North Carolina.

Fraser and noble firs are considered the best-quality Christmas trees, and the demand for them is growing. Consumers want trees that stay green and plush throughout the holiday season—two factors that keep the industry on a knife-edge. Because here’s the problem. Disease is a big threat to Fraser and noble firs.

For example, if Phytophthora root rot strikes a plantation, the losses can be as high as 75% and ruin the soil for future tree growing. Noble firs are also vulnerable to disfiguring conditions like current season needle necrosis and needle blight syndrome, making them unmarketable. To ensure that everyone gets their dream Christmas tree, pathologists work year-round behind the scenes to research these diseases and find alternative, healthier tree species.^[3]

7 Endangered Christmas Trees

In the wild, about 200 species of “Christmas trees” face extinction. Despite the demand for millions of conifers, the Christmas tree trade isn’t responsible. Instead, these wild populations are decimated by deforestation, competition from other trees, and disease.

For example, the popular Fraser fir grows in the Appalachian Mountains, where wild trees are endangered due to a pest called the balsam woolly adelgid. Canker disease devastated the Stinking Cedar in Florida so completely that all breeding adults were wiped out in the 1950s. With 0.3% of their population remaining, the species is now one of the rarest conifers in existence. The Paraná pine in Brazil is critically endangered because of deforestation.

Some trees do themselves no favors. In China, only 600 Ziyuan firs remain in the wild, with few mature trees. Bizarrely, the males often release pollen before the females are ready, missing the opportunity for propagation. Overall, these are just a few examples of countless Christmas tree species that struggle to survive, but there are many more.^[4]

6 Flame Retardants Might Cause Fires

When buying a real Christmas tree, it’s instinctive to worry about fire. Some trimmings, like lights, exude heat, and as the tree’s branches dry out, there is a risk that the needles might catch fire. For this reason, many people spray flame retardants on their new trees. However, a 2008 study found something concerning. Flame retardants don’t work on Christmas trees that are freshly cut.

At Washington State University, professors specializing in horticulture and plant diseases tested two brands of flame retardants on Fraser and Douglas firs, two of the most popular Christmas trees in America. They found that the chemicals didn’t have any benefits. In fact, they dried the trees out faster, especially the Douglas firs, making the trees more flammable.

Luckily, the study also found a safe alternative—just keep your tree in a bucket of fresh water. This simple act allows the branches to absorb more water, making them less vulnerable to catching fire.^[5]

5 Unsafe Tree Recipes

When January rolls around, and Christmas trees need a new purpose, it’s common sense not to serve the yellowing spruce up to one’s family. However, the city of Ghent, located in northern Flanders, recently encouraged its citizens to recycle their post-Christmas conifers on the dinner table. The city’s website gave a few “recipes” to try, including blanching and drying needles to flavor butter.

The federal agency for food chain security of Belgium, or AFSCA, wasn’t amused. According to AFSCA, nobody should ever eat their Christmas tree—and not just because it’s odd. There are real health hazards. For example, some Christmas tree farms use pesticides and flame retardants on their products, which, when consumed, can have serious health consequences and even cause fatalities.^[6]

4 Fish Enjoy Them Too

Once Christmas is over, many tree sellers have a surplus of unsold stock. Every year, some of these businesses donate hundreds of trees to Pete Alexander, the fisheries program manager for the East Bay Regional Park District, and he dumps them in lakes. More specifically, volunteers help him tie bunches of trees together and secure them to the bottom of the lake.

Every lake is carefully selected, mostly for being barren and in need of a better habitat for fish. The trees are perfect for the job. Once they are tied down, they start collecting algae on their branches within a few days. The trees last roughly five years, plenty of time for fish to enjoy the algae and shelter among the branches.^[7]

3 Meet the Immortal Trees

The United States has roughly 15,000 Christmas tree farms. The work is heavy, requiring soil preparation, planting new trees, keeping them healthy, dispensing fertilizers and pesticides, cutting them down, digging out the stumps, and then starting the process all over again.

A few farms do something else. They bypass the intensive land management by growing new trees from the stumps of old ones, a propagation technique that can go on indefinitely. Called coppicing, the method is actually ancient and reaches back to Neolithic times.

One of the longest-running farms that still uses coppicing is Pieropan Christmas Tree Farm in Massachusetts. Running since 1955, it doesn’t look like a “normal” farm where trees grow in rows. Instead, the trees appear randomly in an active and lively ecosystem that includes other plants and wildlife. The Christmas trees are not fertilized, irrigated, or sprayed, making it a more sustainable and affordable business model.^[8]

2 They’re a Road Hazard

According to the AAA, Christmas trees pose a surprisingly common danger to drivers. During a four-year study that ended in 2017, they found that many Americans did not properly secure their new tree, causing some to fly off the vehicle’s roof or scatter deadly debris on the road. They counted over 200,000 crashes, 39,000 injuries, and 500 fatalities.

Christmas trees also cause damage to the buyer’s car. If a tree is secured with ropes through open windows or door jambs (instead of a roof rack), it risks scratched paint, torn door seals, or warped window frames that can cost hundreds of dollars to repair.

Perhaps most surprisingly, every U.S. state has laws that fine drivers for anything that falls off a vehicle, including Christmas trees. Fines range between $10 and $5,000, while 16 states also offer jail as punishment.^[9]

1 The Trees Hiding Real Gold

Something bizarre is happening in Lapland. A recent study found that some Norway spruce, a popular Christmas tree, contains real gold. This is not a new discovery. Certain eucalyptus species in Australia accumulate microscopic amounts of gold in their leaves by drawing nanoparticles of gold from the earth via a process called biomineralization.

Nobody knows why only some plants do this, or how. But the Christmas tree study partially cracked the code. Scientists from the University of Oulu took samples from 138 Norway spruce trees growing near Europe’s largest gold mine.

The needles of four trees contained gold nanoparticles. Curiously, these trees had an abundance of certain bacterial species. These bugs might explain how gold in the earth, tiny enough to be liquid, can reappear as larger particles in leaves. Early evidence suggests that water moves the gold ions up the tree and into the needles, where bacteria alter them into solid, nano-sized bits.^[10]