A Little Fir Tree's Born…

    Before New Year, the most actual theme is the choice and ornamentation of main decoration – fir tree.

    How did tradition to bring this fluffy plant at home and to hang ornaments on its branches arise?
It appears that cult of fir-tree as a symbol of the never-dying nature came from ancient Germans. In their culture fir tree was much esteemed and it identified as a peace tree during all paganism period. After German nation’s christening customs and ceremonies, related with fir tree’s honoring, started to acquire Christian meaning, after the fir tree was started to be used as a Christmas tree. Decoration of the tree gained Christian implication too. The tree was ornamented by canonical rules: “Bethlehem star” on the top, “apples” as a symbol of forbidden fruit from the Bible, burning candles to represent Jesus victim, but wafer figures are like the image of fresh small loafs of bred.

    If you decided to revive ancient cult of worship to the fir tree at home you have several variants:
      a) cut down the tree by yourself
      b) buy it (at once alternative comes into sight – to buy a real or artificial one)
      c) to call on the house (we are not looking through this variant now)

    To realize plan a) you will need: alcoholic drink (for courage, especially if it is your first experience), an axe, and some money to pay for the administrative breach, different assistant materials (compass, sledge, cord), and good taste, of course, try to choose the real treasured one from thousands of similar fir trees.
While somebody has chosen the first variant and wander around the wood suffering from hard selection, we will turn to the plan b).

    Fresh fir tree must have flexible, elastic and hardly bending branches. If you have bended the branch easily and it has broken under your finger pressure it means that the tree has dried up, it will not stay long and it will start to fall of its needles after some days.

    Smell the fir tree – it must smell of not only forest animals, but also exhale the pleasant smell of needles. Then pound coniferous needles with your fingers and if some easy oiliness has remained and fragrant scent appeared, then take this tree immediately. And, if your magical actions haven’t caused any suspicions from the seller side, look to the tree trunk – is there any dark circumference or not.

If you are the opponent of cutting down the trees then the artificial tree is the best variant for you, but you should take some facts into consideration. Slide down through the soft needles with your hand against the needle positioning direction and pull up the stiff one. Needles must straighten and shouldn’t fall of. Price for the artificial fir tree depends on the way how the fir tree is picking up together. You can buy cheap Chinese set with branches and trunk – “make yourself” variant, also you can get European fir tree which easily and with no effort is putting out, like an umbrella. Material which the fir tree is made of is very important too. Even artificial fir trees made of paper exist (can you guess how the spoilt fir trees are used), but paper ones will not stand longer than 3 years, so it is much better to prefer PVC (polyvinyl chloride). Remember, that not qualitative Christmas tree can ruin not only your mood, but also damage your health properly, because synthetic materials may emit harmful chemical substances. It is advisable the fir tree to be fireproof, that means, it must have fire extinguisher in the set, or at least be made of polymers with different elements which prevent fire.      Besides, manufacturers of artificial Christmas trees have stepped far forward so you can’t distinguish artificial trees from the real ones so easily. They got skilled at impregnation the branches with smell of pine needles and also the tree may have cones. And if you are original person, you can choose red, white, blue, orange fir trees.       No matter what kind of Christmas tree you have chosen, it must bring pleasure and holiday feeling for you and your relatives. P.S. those, who has turned from the forest with nothing – still b) variant is available!