Category: Christmas

Christmas tree needle shedding prompts scientific action

by On the River, posted in Christmas

Christmas tree needle shedding prompts scientific action

The presents are unwrapped. The children’s shrieks of delight are just a memory. Now it’s time for another Yuletide tradition: cleaning up the needles that are falling off your Christmas tree.

“I’m not particularly worried about it … I’ll just sweep it up,” said Lisa Smith-Hansford of New York, who bought a small tree at a Manhattan sidewalk stand early this week. She likes the smell of a real tree, she said, comparing it to comfort food.

But others do mind. Consumers consistently cite messiness as one of the most common reasons they don’t have a real tree, says the National Christmas Tree Association.

Keeping a tree well-watered goes a long way toward minimizing the needle problem. But beyond that, scientists are trying to find ways to make trees less messy and keep them fresh through the holidays.

It’s in the genes

Some kinds of trees, like the noble fir or Fraser fir, are better than others at maintaining moisture and keeping their needles once they’re in your house, says Gary Chastagner of Washington State University. But even within a given species, some trees are better than others, he said. Needle retention is an inherited trait: if a tree does well, so will the offspring that grow from the seeds in its cones.

At a research station in Puyallup, Washington, Chastagner works to identify individual trees that hold onto their needles best. He tests branches cut early in the fall, which encourages needle loss because they haven’t experienced cold weather. He lets them dry out and his team evaluates them after about 10 days, looking for branches that do not shed any needles. Needles start to fall off branches from some trees within three to five days when the branch is gently rubbed, even if they aren’t dry and brittle. A poor performer may lose all of them within a week.

Test a branch

If a branch does well, it means the tree has good genetics for keeping needles. So growers can seek out seeds from those trees to produce seedlings for future planting. These progeny should do well, too. With a federal grant, Chastagner is also working with others to identify genetic markers that indicate whether a tree will resist needle shedding. That would make the tree-screening process much faster and perhaps lead to breeding experiments to produce superior trees.

Trees that experience warm autumns tend to have more needle loss later, Chastagner said. So if global warming leads to warmer falls in the future, it could be bad news for Christmas trees, he said. But since his studies focus on tree branches harvested before cold autumn weather sets in, they may identify trees that will do well in a warming world, he said.

More water will help

Chastagner emphasizes that homeowners can minimize needle shedding by keeping their displayed trees well-supplied with water. In fact, when he has set up trees for research in early December and kept them watered, some species, like noble and Nordmann fir, have gone even three months with only minimal shedding. “The potential is phenomenal,” he said.

5 Remarkable Ways Peppermint Can Boost Your Health

by On the River, posted in Christmas, FOOD, medicine

5 Remarkable Ways Peppermint Can Boost Your Health

We’re forced to turn down a number of snacks and treats during the holiday season for the sake of our health, but there’s at least one wintertime snack we can rely on to keep us fit, both mentally and physically: peppermint. Don’t put down those candy canes just yet, because this natural ingredient offers health benefits that every one of us can use.

Read on to learn five surprising health benefits of peppermint. Here’s to a guiltless holiday season!

1. It aids indigestion

Peppermint can help cure health issues in the abdominals and digestive tract, reports Harvard Medical School’s HEALTHbeat newsletter. Multiple studies have pointed to the ingredient’s effectiveness in treating and relieving symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which include cramping, bloating, constipation, and diarrhea. One 2007 experiment found that 75% of patients who took peppermint oil capsules for four weeks saw a major decline in IBS symptoms, compared with just 38% of patients who took a placebo pill.

2. It may help clear a stuffy nose

Menthol, one of the biggest active ingredients in peppermint, has not been proven to clear the nasal passages, but a 2008 study published in Pediatric Pulmonology found that the substance does increase subjects’ perception of nasal airflow. Menthol is frequently used in over-the-counter decongestants, such as topical ointments, to lend a feeling of greater nasal airflow to patients — when you’re feeling under the weather, a little psychological pick-me-up can go a long way!

3. It curbs appetite

Having trouble resisting the holiday season’s many decadent dishes? Try sniffing a bit of peppermint to curb those cravings! The Chicago Tribune reports on a study in which half the volunteers sniffed the scent of peppermint every two hours. The volunteers who sniffed the scent ate, on average, 2,800 fewer calories per week than the non-sniffing group. As the Tribune notes, that’s enough to lose a full pound!

4. It boosts concentration

If you’re struggling with alertness and concentration, another sniff of peppermint might be in order. A study at Wheeling Jesuit University monitored subjects during driving under three different odor conditions: peppermint, cinnamon, and non-odor (the control group). Subjects in each test condition were monitored for wakefulness, cognitive performance, and mood. The results indicated that subjects exposed to the scent of peppermint experienced a decrease in anxiety, fatigue, and frustration levels while driving, while also becoming more alert. Dr. Bryan Raudenbush, who led the study, noted that the periodic release of these scents over long-term driving could abate the threats of road rage and highway traffic accidents.

5. It eases tension headaches

A 1996 study published in Der Nervenarzt, translated by the National Institutes of Health, found that a 10% peppermint oil in ethanol solution effectively alleviated tension headaches, making the substance a natural, well-tolerated, and cost-efficient alternative to therapies such as acetaminophen. If you can’t seem to manage the stress of the holiday season, you’ll be shocked at how much better you’ll feel after you polish off a candy cane!

Christmas traditions: Why do we celebrate on Dec. 25th?

by On the River, posted in Christmas

The 25th of December is a day eagerly awaited by many who celebrate Christmas — but how did it the holiday end up on that date?

While Christmas celebrations take place in some parts of the world as early as December 6th and as late as January 6th in others, for most who observe the holiday it’s the 25th when Santa Claus arrives down the chimney to deliver gifts. The reason this date is so widely-accepted lies far back in history, when early Christians were still struggling to consolidate the various celebrations of the fledgling faith into one cohesive calendar of feast days.

Early Christians had no Christmas as we would recognize it now and in fact, the Bible suggests Jesus was actually born when shepherds were out tending to their flocks in the field — which was likely not winter.

Scholars suggest his birth more likely took place in the spring and there was actually an ancient push to make March 25 ‘Christmas,’ or the day on which Jesus’s birth was commemorated.

Other early Christians observed the holy day on January 6, which was already a pagan holiday as it was believed to commemorate the birth of the Egyptian god Osiris who, like Jesus, supposedly rose from the dead.

The discrepancies persisted for years until the Church began a concentrated effort to bring pagans into the faith and it was in AD 350 that Pope Julius I decreed Dec. 25 as the day Jesus’s birth would be celebrated.

This was highly convenient for the Church, which was very much in the business of trying to convert pagans to the new religion, because Dec. 25 was a pagan holy day celebrating the birth of the Persian sun god Mithras and was already deeply embedded in the Roman Empire since being brought back by Roman soldiers fighting in Syria.

The early Church figured holding their holy day on the same date as the pagan holy date would make it easier for pagans to adjust to the new rituals of the Christian faith and over time, Christianity overtook the pagan origins of the date.

In his book, Christmas Mischellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Christmas, Jonathan Green writes that it was felt applying Christmas meanings and symbolism to old rituals would make it easier for people to convert and accept the new Christian religion, whereas stamping the practices out entirely would have been seen as antagonistic.

It would seem he was correct: Christmas is now widely celebrated in the Western world and the pagan origins largely ignored by observers.