OK. I admit it. I’m watching American Inventor.
And I just can’t stop wanting to scream at the TV “The solution to burning christmas trees isn’t a fancy invention for fire suppression. STOP PUTTING FIRE HAZARDS IN YOUR HOUSE.”
There. That’s my invention. Leave the trees outside. Fires suppressed. I haven’t had a real christmas tree inside the house for, what? A quarter century?
Now, where’s my million dollars?
In our house, the solution is to just not leave the room when the candles on the tree are burning. So simple, really.
another trick might be to use LED lights rather than open flames on dry pine trees… 😉
What makes you think the trees are dry? We spritz them every few hours with a little kerosene to keep things lively.
man, I’d love to see christmas morning at your place… I’ll bring the marshmallows… 🙂
Seriously, though. My sister-in-law is from the Czech Republic and up until fairly recently they still put sparklers on their Christmas tree. My brother still can’t forget what THAT was like the first time he visited for the holiday.
Then again, it also seems to be a Czech tradition to keep a carp in the bathtub for a few days before Christmas for the big holiday dinner. So, whatever. To each, his own.
The real tradition in our house (candles and kerosene aside) is to save last year’s tree and burn it the next year in the fireplace on Christmas day (a childhood tradition of my husband’s). Can I justify that since we’re getting a little heat out of it? We use a wood stove, so it’s even a little efficient! 🙂
Yeah – 30 million Christmas trees sold each year – doesn’t seem to be so unsafe — they keep selling them.
I am Voting for the cool HT Racers toys — 1-866-874-2503
We had the same fake tree every year as a kid, it came over with us to the UK so was a little bit of home. My bro and I used to measure ourselves against it every year to see how much we had grown, sadly my brother beat it in height but I never did.
I just love this conversation is taking place in July. What did you say the temperature was there again? Something-crazy-degrees-c wasn’t it? 🙂
@Martha: ah, the traditional Czech Christmas Carp… And burning the tree in a wood stove is a good idea – at least a new tree didn’t have to get chopped. Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. 🙂
@todd: it may not be a significant percentage of trees that wind up burning down a house, but the inventor’s logic was “if I only save one child’s life, this invention will have been worth it.” The only guaranteed way to save a life from fire is to prevent the fire in the first place. Don’t put kindling inside your house. And if you insist on putting kindling in your living room, draped in flammable items, and decorated with flammable presents underneath, maybe keep flames or other sources of ignition well away from it. Just seems a little more intelligent than placing a pressurized water canister beneath the tree, connected to a heat sensitive plug on top of the tree, hoping it all works properly in case of fire. And also hoping that it doesn’t decide that the christmas lights are too hot and dousing the living room (and all of the presents) just for something to do… Seems silly, is all…
@Chris: it’s christmas in July! It’s only supposed to hit 27˚C here today (thankfully) but it’s a DRY heat. badump bum.
What really pissed me off about that episode (I watched large parts of the show, by co-incidence, for the first time ever recently before seeing this post during a search for something else altogether), was the creepy, manipulative way the judges dragged out the announcements of moving on or not. Man, it was sickening seeing those snotty repeated close-ups of the faces of the contestants, trying like vultures for emotion and tears. I don’t plan on watching that show again for that specific reason. 🙁