Shortly after seeing the last remaining leaves fall like confetti - freed from the clutches of their limbs - a familiar but surreal landscape appears throughout New York's streets. Signifying the impending fervor of Christmas, these migratory forests seemingly emerge overnight and transform the City's hyper-illuminated, and otherwise barren glow.
What strikes me as so powerful about their widespread sale is the intriguingly symbolic and metaphoric history the lowly Christmas tree has - deeply rooted in a middle-European folk-rite long forgotten. Contemporary society has unequivocally rooted it within a commodified culture of consumption and status. A constructed and temporary landscape lasting no more than a few weeks every year, it's artificiality is not only supported with elaborate scaffolding, but by it's disposable equal; an iconic representation in colour (pink, silver, red), texture (nylon, or plastic), and shape (coiled fibreoptic light rods). 'Real' trees are produced (harvested) like chicken and cattle for their immediate demand, and appear in the most creative of locations: hanging precariously to construction cranes above the city, erected as objets d'art that enhance the stark entrances of private institutions, or in the windows of penthouses and apartments that compete with even the most exquisite of retail displays.
This ritual of erecting temporary forests throughout the City is not unique to New York but, noticeably commonplace throughout much of the world. An eerie return of the ancient forests that once stood where dendritic limbs of concrete, glass and steel now reside, the return of this seasonal landscape is no more prominent than the semantical value represented in the sign that is "the Tree at Rockefeller Centre". A modern day reenactment of its historical folk-rite, the lighting of this tree on 2 December initiates the overwhelming rise of this migratory forest.
The commodification and sale of Christmas trees is an image that remains stuck with me. It competes with and, perhaps, has even replaced the nostalgic act of combing the surrounding landscape of my childhood home for "that perfect specimen". Arguably, however, Christmas and its omnipresent signifier - 'the tree' - have simply evolved with urbanization and the unprecedented growth of cities, to be treated as a kind of vernacular forestry practice more than an (historically) religious event.
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