Christmas Trees Confuse Me
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This is the reason behind the Christmas tree, as I have heard it. Thousands of years ago, people in east Europe thought that evergreen trees had magic powers and that this is what enabled them to stay green throughout the winter. They thought that by bringing a bow of the tree into their homes, they would benefit from the tree's magic powers. And that turned into the tradition of a whole tree.
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
Richard Andrew x64 wrote:
Thousands of years ago, people in east Europe thought that evergreen trees had magic powers and that this is what enabled them to stay green throughout the winter. They thought that by bringing a bow of the tree into their homes, they would benefit from the tree's magic powers.
Yep, you got it. :thumbsup: The practice of fostering nature is fundamental to people who practice Paganism. I have to wonder if Christmas trees would exist without the Pagans. It's funny that Pagan customs are embraced during a Christian holiday.
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Well, you can avoid all that worry about ungrounded, unfused electric wires wrapped around a tree standing in a bowl of water by.... ... using real candles, which is what people traditionally did -- in fact, my mother, being German, I have pictures of our Christmas tree with candles when I was 2 or 3 years old.
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A Lightweight Thread Safe In-Memory Keyed Generic Cache Collection Service A Dynamic Where Implementation for Entity FrameworkMarc Clifton wrote:
using real candles, which is what people traditionally did
Yes, I cannot believe that. If you're going to append lit candles to a tree located inside your house, there must be a really good reason why you'd risk so much danger to do so.
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Steve Raw wrote:
Do you ever take a step back and think about the idea of a Christmas tree?
No I haven't put up a tree in probably 30yrs.
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Marc Clifton wrote:
using real candles, which is what people traditionally did
Yes, I cannot believe that. If you're going to append lit candles to a tree located inside your house, there must be a really good reason why you'd risk so much danger to do so.
Christmas trees arrived before electricity. Besides, in the early days of electricity, you wouldn't believe how people handled it! They knew how to handle open flame, having lived with it for thousands of years. Even today, lots of fires are caused by people not knowing how to handle it. Having a modern city-guy put real candles on a tree would probably scare the sh*t out of me. A 90-year old great grandpa who learned to lit both the oven and the open fireplace when he was five years old would make me feel much more confident. Modern people do not know how to handle open fire. A kid may still learn from the great grandpa, but I fear that the young adult would shrug at the old man and rather check if there are some YT videos that can show him how modern people would do it.
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One thing is for sure: It has nothing to do with the Christian celebration of the birth of a couple of Jesuses. It is a strictly heathen symbol that has no foundation in any sort of Jewish or Christian religious beliefs.
The whole timing of Christmas is suspect. There is no evidence that Jesus was born at (or shortly after) the winter solstice, but there is plenty of evidence of pagan winter solstice celebrations. As it has done with other festivals in many places since, the early Christians just took a pre-existing celebration and rebranded it as the celebration of the birth of Jesus.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Christmas trees arrived before electricity. Besides, in the early days of electricity, you wouldn't believe how people handled it! They knew how to handle open flame, having lived with it for thousands of years. Even today, lots of fires are caused by people not knowing how to handle it. Having a modern city-guy put real candles on a tree would probably scare the sh*t out of me. A 90-year old great grandpa who learned to lit both the oven and the open fireplace when he was five years old would make me feel much more confident. Modern people do not know how to handle open fire. A kid may still learn from the great grandpa, but I fear that the young adult would shrug at the old man and rather check if there are some YT videos that can show him how modern people would do it.
trønderen wrote:
Having a modern city-guy put real candles on a tree would probably scare the sh*t out of me.
That made me laugh. I know a bit about the origins of Christmas trees, but who was responsible for coming up with the idea of lighting candles and appending them to a flammable plant inside their house? Perhaps people may have been more familiar with fire science in the past, but it's beyond any person's ability to avoid accidents. The thing about fire is that you don't realize it's out of control until it's too late. I can attest to that. It's one thing to embrace nature, but who came up with the candle idea? The meaning and significance behind that practice are still a mystery to me. Killing a tree, abducting it, and decorating it with shiny objects and fire is a strange thing to do. I can see why you'd like to have a tree inside your home, but dressing it up after you kill it doesn't seem to be in line with the Pagan philosophy of embracing nature. If you do that to a tree, you might as well lure farm animals into your living room and decorate them with all sorts of obscure ornaments and fire, too. Set a few chickens on fire and watch them run around the living room in a ball of flames. What a wonderful time of year. :)
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One thing is for sure: It has nothing to do with the Christian celebration of the birth of a couple of Jesuses. It is a strictly heathen symbol that has no foundation in any sort of Jewish or Christian religious beliefs.
trønderen wrote:
One thing is for sure: It has nothing to do with the Christian celebration of the birth of a couple of Jesuses. It is a strictly heathen symbol that has no foundation in any sort of Jewish or Christian religious beliefs.
I haven't much about heathen influences. I thought it was strictly Pagans who practiced such traditions.
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The electrical hazard isn't that big. In a traditional electrical Christmas candle chain, the individual candle lights are coupled in series, so that the 240 V AC distributed over 24 candle lights make the voltage drop over each of them about 10 V. You can see the series coupling in that unscrewing any one of the lights make the entire chain go black. In theory you could by accident create a shortcut between the first and the last light in the chain; that would be a voltage similar to that of the outlet where it is plugged in. I never heard of that happening. Today, most people use about five hundred LED bulbs rather than 24 candle lights, with an adapter box providing maybe 12 V, maybe only 5. Not really life threatening. One of our friends 30 year ago still used live candles. They had a fair number of spray bottles available all around the tree. Their sons had an awe for the tree when the candles were lit that I found impressing, yet not something that I wanted to transfer to my children.
trønderen wrote:
The electrical hazard isn't that big.
I can imagine it has improved over the years. The last Christmas lights I placed on a tree only had that little two-pronged plug. Those were the times when we'd scoff at wearing a helmet while skateboarding in concrete parking lots, or jumping over a set of stairs. Our tolerance for risking danger back then was a lot more casual than it is now. Either way, I'll skip the candles for LEDs.
trønderen wrote:
One of our friends 30 year ago still used live candles. They had a fair number of spray bottles available all around the tree. Their sons had an awe for the tree when the candles were lit that I found impressing, yet not something that I wanted to transfer to my children.
Wow. That's nuts. You can understand why the whole concept of setting up Christmas trees is so baffling to me. I've gotten some good answers though.
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trønderen wrote:
Having a modern city-guy put real candles on a tree would probably scare the sh*t out of me.
That made me laugh. I know a bit about the origins of Christmas trees, but who was responsible for coming up with the idea of lighting candles and appending them to a flammable plant inside their house? Perhaps people may have been more familiar with fire science in the past, but it's beyond any person's ability to avoid accidents. The thing about fire is that you don't realize it's out of control until it's too late. I can attest to that. It's one thing to embrace nature, but who came up with the candle idea? The meaning and significance behind that practice are still a mystery to me. Killing a tree, abducting it, and decorating it with shiny objects and fire is a strange thing to do. I can see why you'd like to have a tree inside your home, but dressing it up after you kill it doesn't seem to be in line with the Pagan philosophy of embracing nature. If you do that to a tree, you might as well lure farm animals into your living room and decorate them with all sorts of obscure ornaments and fire, too. Set a few chickens on fire and watch them run around the living room in a ball of flames. What a wonderful time of year. :)
Steve Raw wrote:
Set a few chickens on fire and watch them run around the living room in a ball of flames.
Why not go whole hog, and set a pig on fire? Roasting meat smells a lot better than burning feathers. :) (For the humour-impaired, I certainly do not advocate burning pigs, chickens, or any other creature alive)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Do you ever take a step back and think about the idea of a Christmas tree? I know why it all started. That makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why a person would go chop down some perfectly good tree, drag it into their house, stand it upright in a bowl of water, and wrap it with several yards of electrical wire. Why not just drive your car into your house? The electrical plugs are two-pronged and haven't a ground connection. There's no fuse. We need to remember that the tree is standing in a metal bowl of water. You can call me an idiot. People do it all the time. Regardless, I think a fuse and ground connection might come in useful. You're wrapping a flammable plant in electrical wire that's surging with 120 volts of electricity. The whole thing is precariously braced upright by 3 screws anchored to a metal bowl filled with water, and it's inside your house. Christmas trees are dangerous. I'll bet there's an existing term for the phobia of Christmas trees. I haven't a clue as to what the term could be. That's a difficult one. Any ideas? The question I can't answer is, why? Does it symbolize something? What meaning does it have, and what amount of importance supports that meaning? There must be something that compels people to spend time and effort on such a perplexing activity. Is it worth getting electrocuted over? Is it so important that you're willing to let your house burn down? Why kill trees? It doesn't need to be chopped down. Just go outside, find a tree, and decorate it with shiny objects. I don't understand it. :wtf:
let's not forget to tip the waitresses . then there's the Easter Bunny . but that of course is a few months away . so we have something to look forward to .
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Do you ever take a step back and think about the idea of a Christmas tree? I know why it all started. That makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why a person would go chop down some perfectly good tree, drag it into their house, stand it upright in a bowl of water, and wrap it with several yards of electrical wire. Why not just drive your car into your house? The electrical plugs are two-pronged and haven't a ground connection. There's no fuse. We need to remember that the tree is standing in a metal bowl of water. You can call me an idiot. People do it all the time. Regardless, I think a fuse and ground connection might come in useful. You're wrapping a flammable plant in electrical wire that's surging with 120 volts of electricity. The whole thing is precariously braced upright by 3 screws anchored to a metal bowl filled with water, and it's inside your house. Christmas trees are dangerous. I'll bet there's an existing term for the phobia of Christmas trees. I haven't a clue as to what the term could be. That's a difficult one. Any ideas? The question I can't answer is, why? Does it symbolize something? What meaning does it have, and what amount of importance supports that meaning? There must be something that compels people to spend time and effort on such a perplexing activity. Is it worth getting electrocuted over? Is it so important that you're willing to let your house burn down? Why kill trees? It doesn't need to be chopped down. Just go outside, find a tree, and decorate it with shiny objects. I don't understand it. :wtf:
No fuse? Two prongs? 120V? I don't really get any of these things. Here in the UK every plug has a fuse in it, every plug has three pins (not always used for 'double insulated' appliances) and a punchy 240v flows through those terminals. No fuse? Why doesn't everything burn down with electrical failures? No earth, how do you protect metal items? 120v - So you need twice the current/twice the area of wire per watt? Do you have RCD protection, so any earth leakage will cut the power? I take your point!
Regards, Rob Philpott.
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The electrical hazard isn't that big. In a traditional electrical Christmas candle chain, the individual candle lights are coupled in series, so that the 240 V AC distributed over 24 candle lights make the voltage drop over each of them about 10 V. You can see the series coupling in that unscrewing any one of the lights make the entire chain go black. In theory you could by accident create a shortcut between the first and the last light in the chain; that would be a voltage similar to that of the outlet where it is plugged in. I never heard of that happening. Today, most people use about five hundred LED bulbs rather than 24 candle lights, with an adapter box providing maybe 12 V, maybe only 5. Not really life threatening. One of our friends 30 year ago still used live candles. They had a fair number of spray bottles available all around the tree. Their sons had an awe for the tree when the candles were lit that I found impressing, yet not something that I wanted to transfer to my children.
trønderen wrote:
In a traditional electrical Christmas candle chain,
I meant real candles, not "electric" candles.
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Do you ever take a step back and think about the idea of a Christmas tree? I know why it all started. That makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why a person would go chop down some perfectly good tree, drag it into their house, stand it upright in a bowl of water, and wrap it with several yards of electrical wire. Why not just drive your car into your house? The electrical plugs are two-pronged and haven't a ground connection. There's no fuse. We need to remember that the tree is standing in a metal bowl of water. You can call me an idiot. People do it all the time. Regardless, I think a fuse and ground connection might come in useful. You're wrapping a flammable plant in electrical wire that's surging with 120 volts of electricity. The whole thing is precariously braced upright by 3 screws anchored to a metal bowl filled with water, and it's inside your house. Christmas trees are dangerous. I'll bet there's an existing term for the phobia of Christmas trees. I haven't a clue as to what the term could be. That's a difficult one. Any ideas? The question I can't answer is, why? Does it symbolize something? What meaning does it have, and what amount of importance supports that meaning? There must be something that compels people to spend time and effort on such a perplexing activity. Is it worth getting electrocuted over? Is it so important that you're willing to let your house burn down? Why kill trees? It doesn't need to be chopped down. Just go outside, find a tree, and decorate it with shiny objects. I don't understand it. :wtf:
Try to get electrocuted; you'll find it difficult. And why do you claim there's no fuse? Every string of lights I've seen has two fuses in the male plug end, the end that connects to building power outlets. Additionally, every branch circuit in the building has a circuit breaker protecting it. But I agree with not killing trees, unless your beaver is hungry, of course. I used to decorate with a tree when I had little kids around but now that they're all gone, killing trees for their own kids, I just decorate my first Christmas tree that I bought when I moved here, then planted it in the front yard. It's almost impossible to do so anymore, since it's grown to about thirty feet tall, but I still toss some lights on it once in a while.
Will Rogers never met me.
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Try to get electrocuted; you'll find it difficult. And why do you claim there's no fuse? Every string of lights I've seen has two fuses in the male plug end, the end that connects to building power outlets. Additionally, every branch circuit in the building has a circuit breaker protecting it. But I agree with not killing trees, unless your beaver is hungry, of course. I used to decorate with a tree when I had little kids around but now that they're all gone, killing trees for their own kids, I just decorate my first Christmas tree that I bought when I moved here, then planted it in the front yard. It's almost impossible to do so anymore, since it's grown to about thirty feet tall, but I still toss some lights on it once in a while.
Will Rogers never met me.
Roger Wright wrote:
I agree with not killing trees
I used the phrase, "slaughtering them by the millions", in reference to this behavior last week.
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Do you ever take a step back and think about the idea of a Christmas tree? I know why it all started. That makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why a person would go chop down some perfectly good tree, drag it into their house, stand it upright in a bowl of water, and wrap it with several yards of electrical wire. Why not just drive your car into your house? The electrical plugs are two-pronged and haven't a ground connection. There's no fuse. We need to remember that the tree is standing in a metal bowl of water. You can call me an idiot. People do it all the time. Regardless, I think a fuse and ground connection might come in useful. You're wrapping a flammable plant in electrical wire that's surging with 120 volts of electricity. The whole thing is precariously braced upright by 3 screws anchored to a metal bowl filled with water, and it's inside your house. Christmas trees are dangerous. I'll bet there's an existing term for the phobia of Christmas trees. I haven't a clue as to what the term could be. That's a difficult one. Any ideas? The question I can't answer is, why? Does it symbolize something? What meaning does it have, and what amount of importance supports that meaning? There must be something that compels people to spend time and effort on such a perplexing activity. Is it worth getting electrocuted over? Is it so important that you're willing to let your house burn down? Why kill trees? It doesn't need to be chopped down. Just go outside, find a tree, and decorate it with shiny objects. I don't understand it. :wtf:
My uncle started a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania USA. It has supplied the White House their main Christmas tree twice. It is being run by a third generation family member today. So I would say in their case, bringing trees indoors at Christmas has supplied them with a nice income for generations.
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Do you ever take a step back and think about the idea of a Christmas tree? I know why it all started. That makes sense to me. What I don't understand is why a person would go chop down some perfectly good tree, drag it into their house, stand it upright in a bowl of water, and wrap it with several yards of electrical wire. Why not just drive your car into your house? The electrical plugs are two-pronged and haven't a ground connection. There's no fuse. We need to remember that the tree is standing in a metal bowl of water. You can call me an idiot. People do it all the time. Regardless, I think a fuse and ground connection might come in useful. You're wrapping a flammable plant in electrical wire that's surging with 120 volts of electricity. The whole thing is precariously braced upright by 3 screws anchored to a metal bowl filled with water, and it's inside your house. Christmas trees are dangerous. I'll bet there's an existing term for the phobia of Christmas trees. I haven't a clue as to what the term could be. That's a difficult one. Any ideas? The question I can't answer is, why? Does it symbolize something? What meaning does it have, and what amount of importance supports that meaning? There must be something that compels people to spend time and effort on such a perplexing activity. Is it worth getting electrocuted over? Is it so important that you're willing to let your house burn down? Why kill trees? It doesn't need to be chopped down. Just go outside, find a tree, and decorate it with shiny objects. I don't understand it. :wtf:
Steve Raw wrote:
What I don't understand is why a person would go chop down some perfectly good tree
Cause it is going to be cold outside? Inside is warm.
Steve Raw wrote:
There must be something that compels people to spend time and effort on such a perplexing activity.
Do you know what the New York SantaCon is? How about ultra marathons? Or 24 hour mountain bike racing? Or that the hot dog eating record is 76? I mean where do those even go?
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Christmas trees arrived before electricity. Besides, in the early days of electricity, you wouldn't believe how people handled it! They knew how to handle open flame, having lived with it for thousands of years. Even today, lots of fires are caused by people not knowing how to handle it. Having a modern city-guy put real candles on a tree would probably scare the sh*t out of me. A 90-year old great grandpa who learned to lit both the oven and the open fireplace when he was five years old would make me feel much more confident. Modern people do not know how to handle open fire. A kid may still learn from the great grandpa, but I fear that the young adult would shrug at the old man and rather check if there are some YT videos that can show him how modern people would do it.
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I can give you one reason: The smell. Plastic trees are worthless. The "Silver Fir" (edelgran, 'noble fir') that doesn't shed its needles, hence have been very popular the last few years, has virtually no smell, and is worthless. A true "Norway Spruce": When you enter the living room in the morning where the tree has has had all night to spread its subtle perfume all over the room ... Nothing can give me the Christmas feeling like that! You can have similar experiences with juniper branches, or by burning incense, but those are raw and brutal when compared to the rich, sophisticated aroma of a true, Norwegian Spruce, Christmas tree.
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trønderen wrote:
In a traditional electrical Christmas candle chain,
I meant real candles, not "electric" candles.
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No fuse? Two prongs? 120V? I don't really get any of these things. Here in the UK every plug has a fuse in it, every plug has three pins (not always used for 'double insulated' appliances) and a punchy 240v flows through those terminals. No fuse? Why doesn't everything burn down with electrical failures? No earth, how do you protect metal items? 120v - So you need twice the current/twice the area of wire per watt? Do you have RCD protection, so any earth leakage will cut the power? I take your point!
Regards, Rob Philpott.
UK is the only country I know of which (often) has fuses in the socket. (And the only country to use those huge sockets fuse or not.) The common solution is to have a central fuse box - that is, in the other end of the cable. It doesn't make that much difference. Except that the central fuse is dimensioned according to the cable running to the socket, to keep it from overheating and causing a fire. If there were no central fuse, and the cabling was 1.5 sqmm (capable of handling 10 A), then you plug in a 4 kW heater with a 20 A fuse, this fuse will not prevent the cable up to the socket from overheating. So I guess that you have a central fuse box as well. Then you have a cable (from the fuse box to the socket with one fuse in each end. Having fuses in both ends won't prevent that many fires compared to a cable with only a fuse in the central end. This plug with a fuse is/was closely associated with the "ring circuit" wiring layout, which is something else I have never heard of outside the UK. The British plug does have its advantages over Schuko, say, used in most European countries. One is the the mechanical strength. Compare it to the original USB B plug compared to mini, micro and C plugs - people rejected the B plug, crying for something smaller and more lightweight. Another: It is polarized - the Schuko (as well as the ungrounded US plug) is not, even though the most common power supply ("TN") is asymmetric: One pin is "live", the other is "neutral". If you turn the plug 180 degrees around, live and neutral switches, on the plug side. So you really should always use two-pole switches on the plug side; they are almost always single-pole. So I am not too exited about neither Schuko or the US plug, we should have learn some lessons from the UK, but without adopting that strange "ring circuit" layout and the cast iron (or is it lead?) plugs.
