Will your family be celebrating Christmas with a real tree this year? Amica Insurance has some excellent advice for finding, and caring for, your Christmas tree. Following this advice is a good way to make your celebration safer, and more pleasant.
A beautifully decorated Christmas tree is the centerpiece of the season. You will see them in stores, churches, and in people’s homes at this time of year. Most retail stores will select an easy to care for plastic Christmas tree to put up. Many families, however, have traditions that include selecting a real Christmas tree.
Real Christmas trees require quite a bit of care. Plastic trees don’t need as much care and maintenance as real trees do, but they still need a certain amount of attention, for safety reasons. According to the U.S. Fire Administration, Christmas trees are the source for about 250 fires a year. These fires result in fourteen deaths, twenty-six injuries, and almost $14 million in property damage.
Amica Insurance wants your family to be safe this Christmas. The insurer has some excellent advice about how to select a real Christmas tree, and about how to properly care for it.
This advice could help you to keep your tree fresh for as long as possible, and can also prevent you from having a fire in your home. It is easy to see why an insurer would want to educate people about how to avoid dangerous situations that could result in insurance claims.
If you are getting a real tree, make sure it is fresh. Diane Duquette, of Duquette Tree Farm in Rhode Island, suggests that you run your hand along the branch. If the tree is fresh, then the green needles will not fall off from a touch.
Once you bring your tree home, you should store it outside, in a bucket of water, until you are ready to bring it into the house. At that time, cut an inch off the end of the trunk. This will help your tree to absorb water, and prevent it from drying out too quickly.
At least once a day, you should check to make sure your tree has water. Again, this helps keep the tree from drying out. Keeping up with the necessary maintenance can help keep your tree fresh, and fragrant, for about a month.
There are several things you can do to decrease the chances that your Christmas tree will catch fire. Amica Insurance has the following advice: Do not put your tree next to a heat source, like a wood stove, fireplace, furnace, or heat vent. Don’t use lit candles as decorations on your Christmas tree.
Make sure that the strings of lights that you want to put on your tree are not frayed, and that there are no loose bulbs. Don’t connect more than three strings of lights together, and do not overload an extension cord or outlet. If your tree dries out, and begins dropping needles, it has become a fire hazard. Now is the time to dispose of that tree, and replace it with a fresh one, (or a plastic one).
Image by Steven Depolo on Flickr