🎄 The Annual Christmas Tree Burn ☃

We have a New Year's Eve tradition: we burn last year's Christmas tree in our fire pit. In this way, we send off the old year and welcome in the new. We have a few friends over and my wife, who loves to bake, produces tons of cookies and brownies and all kinds of things.

Starting last year, one of our friends started bringing their family's tree over, as well, so we get to burn multiple trees.

Of course, this involves keeping the tree for an entire year-plus to give it a chance to dry out. We're lucky enough to have room to do this for a tree, or sometimes more if I get them from the neighbors.

And when these things go up, they *go up*. The fire department isn't kidding when they say don't let these dry up in your house. A modest noble fir will produce a tower of flames.

👍 Protips:

• This is a great time to also burn your private documents so they don't fall into the wrong hands.
• Keep clear of anything flammable. Keep some kind of extinguisher nearby.
• Consider burning the tree upside down for maximum effect.
• Keep a handsaw and lopping shears handy to chop up the remnants to burn completely.
• You might need to use some kind of implement to keep the tree upright while it burns. I use a fire log grabber thing. Another option might be a long pole or chain that two people hold at either end to hold the tree.
• Wear a leather glove for protection to hold the grabber.
• Wear a hat.
• Don't wear anything you don't mind getting holes burnt in.
• Just don't actually do this at all. That's the safe thing.

This year, though, things didn't work out. We only had two Douglas firs; one was needle-poor (it was a scrawny tree to begin with, and lots of the needles got knocked off), and the other had been left out in the winter rain.

The scrawny one kinda burned. So that was okay. We added a little kerosene to the wet one and that one went up better. But we need to try to improve things for next year.

Next time:

• Leave the trees out all summer.
• Bring them in at first rain.
• Cut a 12-foot (4-meter) tree in half and burn the halves.

🥳 Happy New Year!

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