This stretch of Broadway on the Upper West Side is about to become a monument to the annual tree sacrifice.
Dateline New York City. Christmas preparations are underway on Broadway in New York City as the annual sacrificing of the evergreen trees ramps up. An ancient pagan tradition going back millennia as part of the annual festivities designed to counter Seasonal Affective Disorder.
The pagan ritual was adapted by Christians in 16th Century Europe though not without controversy. As recent as the 1850’s fundamentalist Christian ministers were protesting the practice of erecting Christmas trees as a pagan practice with Druid roots. In their inimitable fashion, Christian Fundamentalists now claim the sacrifice of the evergreen tree as their own tradition and refuse to share it with others, most especially pagans.
The empty racks (ironically made from processed pine trees) shown in the accompanying photo will be filled with the “harvested” evergreen trees by Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving and the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season. As this article is being written, tens of thousands of trees are being cut down and loaded onto farm vehicles from as far away as Maine and even Canada and are headed to New York City to fill racks as those shown here.
Once the evergreen sacrifice season is over, the remains of these sacrifices will be returned to their natural environments using organic methods such as landfills or high tech incinerators.