Environmentalists have called on the pope to halt the chopping down of a tree destined for St. Peter’s Square this Christmas, but the town providing the tree says it was doomed anyway.
In a few days, President Biden will be presented with a live turkey that he will undoubtedly pardon, partaking in an enduring pre-Thanksgiving ritual that may be “America’s most hokey modern presidential tradition.”
In Italy this year, environmentalists are calling on Pope Francis to stay the execution — so to speak — of a tree towering nearly 100 feet tall that hails from the northern region of Trentino and has been destined to adorn St. Peter’s Square for the Christmas season.
Citing three of Francis’s major documents on the importance of safeguarding the environment, opponents of the tree’s relocation drafted an online petition calling on the pope to “give clear signals so that we can change our approach toward respecting nature” and spare the tree.
The petition demands “no to fircide” (doubtlessly the evergreen tree equivalent of homicide), saying “Christmas trees are a pagan tradition and have nothing to do with the birth of Christ.”
Ancient Romans are believed to have decorated their homes with evergreen boughs to mark the winter solstice during a feast called Saturnalia. But decorated trees later took root throughout Europe as part of the Christian holiday festivities, with Latvia and Estonia having squabbled over being the site of the world’s first decorated Christmas tree.
In Italy, where many churches and families still celebrate Christmas with miniature nativity scenes, the Christmas tree tradition only really took hold after the end of World War II.
But Italians don’t seem particularly sentimental about the tradition. In Rome, one Christmas tree near City Hall was criticized for being too mangy, and another was compared to a piece of Ikea furniture or Frankenstein. In Naples, trees are regularly stolen.
At the Vatican, the Christmas tree tradition dates to 1982, when a Polish farmer brought Pope John Paul II a tree “all the way” from Poland.
“Since then, the offering of the Christmas tree to the Pope has become an honor,” according to the Vatican, which annually accepts a tree donated from a different European country or region.
Renato Girardi, the mayor of Ledro, the town that gives its name to the valley where this year’s tree is from, said his offer had been on a Vatican waiting list for nine years.
“We wanted to unite the community around a tree,” he said in a telephone interview.
At least tens of thousands apparently disagree with the tree’s planned fate, with the online petition drawing signatures from nearly 50,000 people.
This week, organizers of the protest printed out all the names of the signatories and sent them in a hefty package to Pope Francis (with a request for acknowledgment of receipt).
“We heard the pope doesn’t have an email — but he does open letters,” said Ornella Dorigatti, president of Bearsandothers, one of the groups involved in the protest. They used recycled paper, she said.
The protest also encourages people to print and mail to the pope a pre-written letter, which describes the chosen tree as having been a “mute spectator to two world wars” and having given “shade, shelter and delight” to generations of residents of Ledro and visitors.
Actually, local officials have yet to identify which specific tree would be chopped down, since they want to mislead protesters who had pledged to chain themselves to it, Ms. Dorigatti said.
The letter calls on the pope to do as St. Francis of Assisi would have done: Choose nature over notoriety.
But Mr. Girardi, the mayor, noted that the valley’s economy was dependent on the lumber industry, and that the tree was one of several scheduled to be felled this year in compliance with PEFC, the European Commission forestry certification system.
“If it doesn’t go to Rome it will go to a sawmill,” he said.
“The entire community is involved in this project,” he said, adding that some 600 residents, out of the valley’s population of 5,400, were planning to go to Rome for the tree-lighting ceremony in December.
The mayor said that once the tree had done its turn in St. Peter’s Square, it would be brought back to Ledro and carved into a sculpture for a local art park.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
