Eco-friendly festive trees in Georgia

Thursday 7 January is the Georgian Orthodox Christmas Day (according to the Julian calendar). The Georgian tradition for their Christmas trees is the local Chichilaki. It is a hand-made tree shaped of soft white curls of wood strips (usually a nut wood, such as hazelnut), and comes in a variety of sizes, but generally small to medium.

The white tree resembles the basila – St. Vasily’s beard, the patron saint of animals and the bringer of new happiness. Often instead of baubles, the Chichilaki is decorated with fruits, berries, and flowers, with a wooden cross at the top of the tree – all biodegradable and eco-friendly.

On January 19, the day before the Georgian Orthodox Epiphany, people burn their Chichilaki tree – burning the previous year’s misfortunes, and paving the way for new happiness in the coming year.

Georgia is also well-known for its Caucasion Fir because that too is house friendly – it is not sticky and its pine needles are softer than other species and less likely to fall off. The Caucasian Fir is also called the Nordmann Fir or Abies-Nordmanniana, named after the 19th century Finnish biologist, Alexander von Nordmann, and is native to the Caucasus Mountains.

Georgia exports the seeds from the Caucasian Fir to overseas nurseries. These seeds account for about 90% of the estimated 45 million Christmas trees sold every year in Western Europe, according to Fair Trees, based in Denmark and the only Fair Trade certified Christmas tree grower (Denmark is Europe’s largest exporter of yuletide trees, supplying 7 million per year on average).

Collecting the seeds from the Caucasian Fir can be dangerous. The best trees grow in Racha in the Caucasus Mountains of western Georgia – and the best pine cones are at the top of the trees. Cone pickers need to collect 10 kilograms of cones to make one kilogram of seeds. There is also a narrow winder of opportunity for harvesting – only two weeks in September.

While there are a lot of Caucasion Fir in Georgia, the tradition of the Chichilaki is eco-friendly and a popular alternative – or in addition to the green fir tree.

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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