Super Size Me Tree

Ik begrijp nu waarom ik afgelopen zondag gratis een paar dennetakken meekreeg toen ik om een klein boompje vroeg. Americans with a taste for the titanic, behold the next big big thing: Christmas trees...

• Without a big tree, Stacy (een bomenverkoper) said, "people are going to laugh at you. They're going to walk in and say, 'What the hell happened?'"
• People come onto the lot and say, 'Show me your biggest tree.' That's what they want," Stacy said. If they're not satisfied - after all, tall trees can look less than monumental when they are outside under a yawning sky and the pines are curled from the cold - customers will keep pushing, asking, "Have you got a bigger one in the pile?"
• He (een andere bomenverkoper) estimated that about 25 percent of the business this year was in trees more than 10 feet (3 meter) tall. Many of those customers bought a second tree. "One for the great room - I think that's what they call them, I don't have one, I wouldn't know - and one for the den," he said.
• His largest tree this year was a 15-foot (4,5 meter) Fraser fir that he sold for $385.
• A 15-foot, prelighted artificial tree at Demory's Christmas Memories in Hagerstown can cost as much as $1,600. People special-order the biggest trees as early as August and have them shipped - in two or three boxes - directly to their homes.
  
• He (een plastic bomenverkoper) has noticed that, increasingly, customers are buying oversize decorations for their oversize trees. He sells popular football-size ornaments and 18-inch (45 cm) tree-toppers guaranteed to sparkle - even from on high.
• "Sierra Club (een environmental organization) would love for all good people of good cheer to follow the lead of McDonald's and discontinue their 'super-sizing' ways. Go smaller, not larger. Conserve rather than spend. Collect friends, not things"

(bron: Baltimore Sun)