“Should I eat this ... Christmas tree?” - Belgium edition

January 8, 2025 1:36 AM

Yes, says Ghent Climate City, with the explanation “Your Christmas tree is edible as long as it is not yew, and your tree has not been treated with a fire-resistant spray”. “Pointing with enthusiasm to examples from Scandinavia, the town website suggested needles could be stripped, blanched and dried – for use in making flavoured butter, for instance”; summarised as Scandinaviërs eten kerstbomen (Scandinavians eat Christmas trees). No, retorts Belgium's Federal Agency, with the warning “Christmas trees are not destined to enter the food chain”. Have you ever eaten a tree? If so (or not), then perhaps there's a t-shirt for that.
posted by Wordshore (41 comments total)

People Are Eating Their Christmas Trees, and You Can Too [Vice]
posted by chavenet at 1:43 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Guardian: “You can pretty much eat the whole thing,” said Julia Georgallis, author of How to Eat Your Christmas Tree.

BBC: Other ideas include using the pine for smoked vegetables or pickles, and to spruce up jam and cordial.
posted by Wordshore at 1:49 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

I'm Scandinavian, and apart from a tiny amount of background pine-flavoured stuff around Christmas, I have never heard of anyone eating their Christmas tree.

(I also don't think brewing pine needle tea really constitutes eating a tree. We don't talk about eating tea or coffee plants when we have a cuppa either, do we?)
posted by Dysk at 2:30 AM on January 8 [7 favorites]

It's already on the wood pile.
posted by biffa at 2:37 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

You can also chop the needles and add to bath salt.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:46 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Do they address pine trees versus spruce trees? Mushroom varieties prefer one versus the other.
posted by waving at 2:52 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

For my fellow olds: "Ever Eat A Pine Tree?"
posted by trip and a half at 2:55 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]

As someone in Sweden who knows Dutch, this is all utterly bizarre. The municipal website and the recipe site are doing their damnest to avoid saying anything but "the Nordic countries" or "Scandinavia". No mention of where. I'm guessing this is the work of an overenthusiastic vacation cabin owner.

However, it would definitely track as one of the many Finnish meme foods, eaten when they want to remember they were desperately poor at one point in time. This pine needle butter would fit well with a serving of birch bark bread...
posted by groda at 3:12 AM on January 8 [6 favorites]

I was reading about how to use pine trees as an ingredient the other day, and surprised that I hadn't heard of it prior.
posted by knile at 3:24 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

I sent this to one of my colleagues in Sweden and swiftly received an unusually curt reply, which simply read:

"We are not one of the tree munching nations."
posted by Wordshore at 3:31 AM on January 8 [20 favorites]

Guardian: “You can pretty much eat the whole thing,” said Julia Georgallis, author of How to Eat Your Christmas Tree.

How to Eat Your Christmas Tree is the best How To title for a book since How to Avoid Huge Ships.
posted by zardoz at 4:05 AM on January 8 [6 favorites]

This sounds made up.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:05 AM on January 8 [4 favorites]

A very poker faced Nordic prank committed against Ghent. No doubt the work of a-Ghents provocateurs.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:19 AM on January 8 [22 favorites]

How to Eat Your Christmas Tree

There's also the issue of when to eat your Christmas tree.

If I knew it was tasty, then why wait until twelfth night? The temptation, perhaps on Christmas Eve, maybe even sooner, to just nibble on a twig* every now and then. I mean, the tree has many so who is going to notice the odd slightly shorter branch or two?

*not an innuendo, filthy-minded MeFites
posted by Wordshore at 4:43 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

More Americans Opting To Deep Fry Christmas Tree This Year.
posted by Wordshore at 4:54 AM on January 8 [9 favorites]

There's also the issue of when to eat your Christmas tree.

According to a trad Danish Christmas song, after the tree is displayed ("først skal træet vises / siden skal det spises" - "first the tree is shown/displayed / afterwards it is eaten") which would traditionally be on Christmas eve.

Note that this refers to the traditional practice of hanging treats on the branches of the tree (little colourful paper hearts and cones filled with dried fruits and nuts, marzipan and caramel figurines, sometimes certain cookies that can be tied on with a string, etc.) and not to actually eating the fucking tree itself.
posted by Dysk at 5:03 AM on January 8 [12 favorites]

Some years ago, the local boutique ice cream place made a pine-flavored ice cream. Not sure if they used real pine needles, but it was AMAZING. But it never returned, and I still pine for it.
posted by Quaversalis at 6:15 AM on January 8 [6 favorites]

I read somewhere that spruce needles (in tea and other beverages?) was a source of vitamin C for far northern cultures. I was wondering why those cultures didn't all get scurvy, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:21 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Why eat your tree, when there's someone else who would like it even more?
posted by mittens at 6:39 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

I've had pine syrup from trees from (at the time) old growth pine forests that was made by infusing pine needles in syrup for a long time, and that was really tasty.

I think you can buy it as a cocktail syrup too, but it's a fairly niche thing.
posted by ambrosen at 6:42 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Some years ago, the local boutique ice cream place made a pine-flavored ice cream.

Milk Street has you covered this year.
posted by yerfatma at 6:47 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Blind tasting 6 species of sawdust baked into bread
posted by solotoro at 7:12 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

I read somewhere that spruce needles (in tea and other beverages?) was a source of vitamin C for far northern cultures. I was wondering why those cultures didn't all get scurvy, but I'm too lazy to look it up right now.

Angelica And also kale.
posted by mumimor at 7:19 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

Folks in my community who have goats are asking for people's Christmas trees if they're not treated with chemicals. Apparently goats are enthusiastic consumers and it's a hell of a lot easier than trying to cook them up for people.
posted by dlugoczaj at 7:55 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

“You can pretty much eat the whole thing,” said Julia Georgallis, author of How to Eat Your Christmas Tree.

Is she a beaver?
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:29 AM on January 8 [7 favorites]

as long as it is not yew

Who, me?

24 comments in and nobody had made this joke yet, I had no choice but to  branch  broach the topic
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:31 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]

Pine syrup is made from fresh growth in the spring, canned with sugar. Old Christmas trees tend to be too dry.

Vitamins in winter in northern Europe is what sauerkraut is for. And that big pile of carrots, parsnips beets and onion in the garden, covered with soil and snow. (And the barrels of apples, carefully selected to avoid the bad ones.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 8:32 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

I've certainly eaten foods with some small amount of pine or spruce for flavor. But you certainly aren't going to consume a whole *tree* that way.
posted by potrzebie at 9:30 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Bath salts, you say?

ULTIMATE POWAH!!!! WHOSE DRIVING THIS CLOWN CAR? WHO HAS THREE THUMBS MADE OF BEES? ME! THAT'S YOU! GIMME THAT LEG! GROMF GROMF GROMF ...
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 9:43 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Spruce tips are so delicious but they are just a spring food. If you have access to them, I can reccommend spruce infused vodka, syrup, and sprinkling spruce tip needles on pancakes before you flip them. Supposedly you can also infuse vodka with the mature needles, and grind the interior bark into flour.

There's also a baby pine cone liqueur (mugolio) that is supposed to be very tasty but so far I've barely missed peak cone season so I can't vouch for it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:05 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Not all trees! But the cambium layer of pine, and many other, trees is edible. If I remember right, here in the lumberjack infested forests of British Columbia we sing sing sing that a steady diet of cambium is a decent source of vitamin c and will help stave off scurvy during lengthy stays in the wilds.
posted by house-goblin at 10:18 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

To be clear, here in Belgium we're also baffled by the suggestion. Ghent has an image of being fairly eco friendly, but no one I know is actually eating Christmas trees. We're all too busy eating too much stoofvlees and fries, and drinking enough Rochefort 10 to forget the fact that we haven't seen the sun in three weeks.
posted by Karmeliet at 1:17 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]

I had never heard of stoofvlees, but after having looked it up I now have the ingredients on my shopping list for this weekend!
posted by Dysk at 4:39 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]

My rabbits approve of this post very much.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:32 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]

I had never heard of stoofvlees, but after having looked it up I now have the ingredients on my shopping list for this weekend!

There's a similar dish, zuurvlees, with vinegar that's also easy to make and good on fries.
posted by groda at 6:15 AM on January 9

This sounds made up.

There's a reason for that.

On a completely different topic, did you know that the New York’s Hottest Club Is the Catholic Church? You can tell this is a credible statement because it's in the New York Times.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:18 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]

I had never heard of stoofvlees, but after having looked it up I now have the ingredients on my shopping list for this weekend!

Yessss. My main trick is to take the onions a bit further than you'd think; you don't want them caramelized or anything, but you definitely want some color on them, not just the usual "saute until softened and translucent".
posted by Karmeliet at 7:38 AM on January 9 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: taking the onions a bit further than you'd think
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:39 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]

(which was the style at the time)
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:20 AM on January 9 [1 favorite]

and drinking enough Rochefort 10 to forget the fact that we haven't seen the sun in three weeks

I'm such a big fan of doing this here in Sweden that I drove there to climb up the abbey's wall.
posted by groda at 12:41 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]

Please Don’t Eat Your Christmas Tree, Belgium Urges the Public
posted by waving at 2:47 PM on January 9 [1 favorite]