If you have put up your Christmas tree already, you are going against the local grain.
The Squamish Chief polled 285 readers and asked the question: When is too early to set up the Christmas tree?
The poll ran from 11/13/2024 to 11/21/2024. Of the 285 votes, we can determine that 128 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:
According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, firs are a popular choice for Christmas trees.
"The first Christmas tree in North America was a fir lit with candles and gracing the dining room of the baroness Friederike von Riedesel in Sorel (now Sorel-Tracy), Québec, in 1781."
Though in modern day we associate the Christmas tree with religion—Christianity—that was not always the case.
"The Christmas tree has a pagan origin. Many pagan cultures cut down evergreen trees in December and moved them into the home or temple to recognize the winter solstice, which occurs sometime between Dec. 20 and 23."
The pagans believed the tree had magical powers that would help them get through the coldest and darkest part of winter.
Survey results are based on an online study of adult Squamish Chief readers that are located in Squamish. The margin of error - which measures sample variability - is +/- 5.76%, 19 times out of 20.
The Squamish Chief uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
