Dubai: With just one week left until Christmas, most people in the UAE who celebrate the occasion have already completed the annual hunt for a tree, decorations and gifts.
Like every merry season, supermarkets across the emirates have entire aisles set aside for plastic trees, baubles, tinsels, twinkling lights and Santa statues.
But for people who want the real deal, there are plenty of options to buy real trees imported from the United States, Canada and Holland.
Along a bustling Al Satwa street, next to shops selling bird cages, picture frames and low-cost clothes, traders hawk towering spruce, pine and fir trees from the back of trucks.
“The customers buy very early,” said Ghattas, an Egyptian trader who manages a plant shop on the street. “They start to ask us from early November when the Christmas trees are arriving.”
Most of his buyers are from Europe and United States, he said, and “only some Indians”. This year, all of his stock comes from Canada and the United States.
He sells a 1.8 metre-tall noble fir tree from the western US state of Oregon for Dh650. A metal stand to support the tree costs another Dh100.
Most trees on sale vary from 0.9-2.7 metres, although the traders do a very profitable business selling to hotels.
Nearby, another trader boasts he sold a 4.2 metre-tall tree to a hotel for the hefty sum of Dh6,000.
But all the traders said that this year sales were noticeably slower. “This year, selling is OK, but not the same as last year,” said Ghattas. “Customers are less than last year.”
A Bangladeshi trader at another nearby shop agreed, and blamed lagging sales on oversupply. “This year, prices are very low,” said Mahboub, who points to a 1.8 metre tall Canadian Fraser Fir — prized by tree shoppers for its dark green needles and fresh, light fragrance.
His selling price is Dh450. “Last year, this was selling for more than Dh500.”
Emirati interest
Many of the traders are hoping for a second wind from Russian customers, who commonly celebrate Christmas Day two weeks later on January 7.
At Mamoso, a flower shop in the upscale Times Square mall, US-sourced trees vary in price from Dh470 for a 1.5 metre tall tree, to Dh950 for a 2.2 metre tree.
The shop’s manager, E.J. Pang, said that most of the orders for this year’s trees had already been delivered. She added that several Emirati customers had also bought trees, just to join in the festive fun.
For people on smaller budgets — and who dread the hassle of cleaning up pine needles and sap, there are plenty of options too.
In Lulu Hypermarket in Barsha, a white, ceiling-high imitation tree sells for just Dh399. Meanwhile, multi-coloured, toddler-sized trees, complete with glued-on decorations, sell for just Dh46.
What do trees have to do with Christmas?
Nobody quite knows how trees came to be associated with the annual Christian holiday.
For centuries before Christ’s birth, trees symbolised vitality and eternal life in several cultures.
The first recorded use of trees to celebrate Christmas emerged in France in the 1500s, at the height of the Renaissance era.
For several centuries afterwards, upper-class Germans were known to decorate trees during Christmas time with apples, nuts and lit candles.
By the 1800s, the tradition had spread to Britain, then at the height of its empire, and spread rapidly across Christian cultures.
