Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree is a traditional symbol of the festive season, and where would we be without it –we need something for Santa to put our presents under after all – but what other uses does out tree have?

Pagans and druids celebrated the Winter Solstice on 21st December; the evergreen tree came to represent eternal life and the promise of replenishment and was ‘decorated’ with apples and fruit and candles.  Nowadays, we cover the Christmas tree with twinkling lights and shiny baubles, top it with an angel and trim it with sparkling tinsel.

The custom of putting up a Christmas tree can be traced back to 16th century Northern Germany.  By the early 18th century, erecting Christmas trees had become common in the Rhineland but had not spread to rural areas. It was introduced to Britain in the 1800s although the custom didn’t spread much beyond the royal family.  It became more widespread when Queen Victoria married her cousin Albert, and the Queen’s Christmas tree is still supplied by the German royal family – the public loved Victoria, and whatever she did the public soon followed.

But did you know the good old, hardy evergreen also has many other uses? As well as use in general construction, which you might expect, it’s used in medicine and as an ingredient in beer.

Beer?  Yes you did read correctly – the spruce is used as flavouring, particularly by our neighbours across the pond.  Alba Scots Pine Ale and Winter Ale are flavoured with spruce, and although called ‘beer’ – in most cases it is in fact non-alcoholic.  The beverage is flavoured with the buds, needles or essence of spruce trees and flavours range from floral and citrusy to fruity and piney.  The flavour depends on the spruce species, when the needles are harvested and how they are prepared.  In America, the Sitka spruce is favoured, while the Norway Spruce is used in northern Europe.  

The fresh shoots of pine are a natural source of vitamin C – Captain Cook made an alcoholic sugar-based spruce beer to prevent scurvy in his crew during his voyages.  Leaves and small branches – or the extracted essence of spruce – are boiled with sugar and fermented with yeast.  Wigram Brewing Company’s Spruce Beer is based on this.

Plants and trees were often used for medicinal purposes, and many of the active ingredients found in today’s medicines probably originated in nature somewhere along the line.  Researchers have identified a group of anti-inflammatory compounds in the bark of the Scotch pine – widely used as Christmas trees – that they say could be developed into drugs for treating arthritis and pain. The leader of the study, Kalevi Pihlaja, a chemistry professor at the University of Turku in Finland, explains: “The preliminary study showed that highly purified preparations of pine bark extract have potent anti-inflammatory effects. In the future, this may mean that people with arthritis may ease their pain by eating food supplements made from Christmas trees.” The researchers found that the extract not only inhibited nitric oxide production, an excess of which has been linked to arthritis and circulatory problems, but also inhibited prostaglandin production, which has been linked to arthritis and pain.

So when you’re decorating your tree, remember the alternative life your tree could have had... and then sit back and being the countdown.