Holiday

Holiday

 

In the middle of the night on the 15th of December, a small Christmas tree farm was vandalized, and fifty-three Christmas trees had their tops cut off. The vandals left the trees decapitated by the side of the road. In the morning, the owners were approached by newspaper reporters, the local TV station, and a famous installation artist who wanted to purchase the trees for a temporary display. The artist told the reporters he wanted to help the farmers make the best out of a bad situation. It would be such a pity, he argued, to let the trees go to waste. After the farmers sold the destroyed trees to the artist, the farm was visited by curious onlookers and customers who wanted to buy the halved trees instead of full Christmas trees. One local prominent businessman told the reporters he would not allow vandals to terrorize local farmers and ruin the holiday spirit for everyone in town. In the afternoon, the representative of one school organization appeared and told reporters she wanted to help the farmers donate the halved trees to impoverished families downtown (later, another organization from the same high school deemed this insulting to poor families and wrote an article that appeared in the local newspaper about its efforts to donate full trees only). By the end of the week, the farmers secretly destroyed more trees in order to satisfy the demand for halved trees. By then, however, the town had lost interest in the vandalized trees, so the owners turned the cut- off tops into elaborate centerpieces that sold well—though not as well as the halved trees initially sold. By then, however, it was nearly Christmas day, and the remaining trees were 75% off anyway.