Woodland Bodybags

Woodland Bodybags

While driving around town today, I couldn’t help but notice all the Christmas trees discarded on people’s tree lawns.

There they were. Thrown on their sides, tinsel remnants blowing in the breeze through torn holes in the trash bags they were bound in.

Each one looked like a victim of a violent crime in its own way.

Now, as an Agnostic of sorts, I find this whole ceremony of the tree part of Christmas to be completely ridiculous but have found myself playing along with it for many years to keep those close to me happy.

No harm on that part. We put up our little fake tree and somehow it’s some kind of symbol for an invisible man in the sky to see and he sends one of his dudes from the uninhabitable North Pole out to bring me retail merchandise once a year ...or something like that.

But what I can’t stand is the idea of growing a living thing for the sake of killing it for vanity.

(Cows, most birds and some fish excluded…Those things are yummy and serve a purpose, nourishment.)

What I mean is, I see no problem in using a living creature for resources such as food or materials to better your life. It’s been done since the dawn of man and far before religion.

But to take a tree, grow it until it’s in it’s prime and chop it down just so you can throw some decorations on it for a few weeks and then toss it into a dump EVERY year is just absurd.

I thought about it from another viewpoint after this.

How would humans like it if someone took our young and raised them up to a young man, decorated them with gawdy trinkets, made them a symbol for something that may not even exist and then cut their life shortly after?

Then I realized…we already are.

It’s called the war in Iraq.

I drove home but felt like I just drove in a big circle.

-Bojangles