Christmas was 47 days ago but people are still recycling their trees. And not just a few people, no, there must be a lot of people keeping their trees well into February because:
1. Demand for tree recycling points is high enough that the council has kept doing the clearing rounds 6 weeks after Christmas.
2. There are consistently piles of trees at these points.
3. Some roads are still covered in pine needles and smell like Christmas trees.
If there are still lots of people recycling trees, then there must also be a significant number of people who still have the trees at home somewhere. Like my neighbor...
I thought my neighbor might have forgotten that they even have a tree, because they threw it outside at the beginning of January, still with the lights on. Then it fell over mid January and nobody picked it up. But I can see now there are no lights on it any more, so there is a very slow, glacial even, cleaning process going on here. Maybe they will recycle it in March.
I was taught that it is bad luck to keep Christmas decorations around after the 6th January. Also, trees shed their needles everywhere after a while, so why keep them around? This tree hoarding behaviour just adds further evidence to my mounting case that Swedish people are extremely image conscious, projecting an outward appearance of being sleek, tidy, well designed, organised and clean while secretly hoarding old christmas trees and god only knows what else in their houses. No wonder nobody wants to invite you round for dinner, they've probably got several month's worth of crap built up that they can't be bothered to take away.
