Thomas
Bernhard writes, or rather has one of his characters think, “There is nothing more dreadful than having to go walking on one’s own on
Monday.” I have yet to take a view on this.
I went walking on my own on Friday the 13th
– it didn’t seem especially dreadful, but as I wandered the streets I did see
that the spirit of Christmas had well and truly receded.
Of course the world is divided between those never
want to take down their Christmas tree at all and those want to get rid of it
while the turkey’s still lukewarm. Having grown up only having "fake" Christmas trees, I felt a great need for a "real" one, and had them for a few years but you don't exactly need to be Al Gore to think there's some conservationist issue at stake here.
But why do people just leave them out on the
street? I can see that the same question
could be asked about old TVs and armchairs, but you can’t easily get a TV or an
armchair into the average garbage can, whereas the ubiquitous green recycling
bins of LA, could accommodate most domestic Christmas trees without much of a
problem.
Somebody – the garbage men, I suppose - does take
the trees away sooner of later, because there won't be any Christmas trees lying
on the streets of Hollywood come July, but it takes a while and I suppose they’re
delivering some kind of punitive, Scrooge-ish message, “Look what a bunch of
littering scumbags your neighbors are!” It works pretty well.
And of course there are those who think that while
they’re putting the Christmas tree out on the street they might as well throw out the cat’s
climbing tree as well. Sad!
