It’s the most wonderful time to reserve Christmas books from your local library. Yes, were only two weeks into November, but hear me out. I don’t hold these books hostage…I just ensure I can get seasonal books in a reasonable amount of time. If someone else checked out a book that I wanted to temporarily integrate into my kids section of our home library, I simply put it on hold and wait for a pick up notification. This way I keep a variety of books in my home for my little readers without wasting money on hits and misses (books that seemed promising but didn’t peak either child’s interest). So, what does this have to do with Christmas Trees? National Geographic Kids Weird But True Christmas has something to do with it.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
The book has 300 festive facts. Also, my kids enjoy Nationals Geographic Kids books. Since my youngest was pretending to give out Christmas gifts with his pillow case full of toys last week, it felt like the right time to take out this book. I probably should have flipped through it first.
The books is colorful and full of pictures, but it’s geared more towards an intermediate reader. If anything, it creates more dialogue between parents to explain vocabulary or/and encourage the child to search for more information. This was a roundabout way of saying, the Christmas Tree facts within the book got my attention. I wanted to fact check the info. Not out of doubt but from curiosity.
The Things We Do For Christmas
Civilization makes it possible to mass produce Christmas trees. Since, commerical Christmas trees have pine needles, I thought they grew naturally within the U.S. This brings us to first weird but true Christmas fact (not really it was on Page 15). “98 percent of Christmas Trees are grown on farms.” Cash crops that are farmed aren’t necessarily supposed to be grown in a particular location. If certain conditions are met, a plant can be grown in places outside of it’s origin. According to National Geographic Kids, it takes upto 10 years to grow them. It makes me wonder how much Christmas Tree farmers are impacted by artificial tree production?
Is it true?
Now the part I’ve forced you to wait on. *Drum roll* Yes, it’s true. Most Christmas Trees are grown in farms. In fact, National Geographic Kids made a YouTube video about it. No need to find it, I brought it here for you.
Final Thoughts
I decided to go in on Christmas Trees, because it felt like TGIF was becoming an extension of Mystery Post Tuesday. I thought back to my first Friday post. The Pumpkin Spice post was fun to write. I wasn’t necessarily unveiling something that others didn’t know about. It was more about the journey. How did I find out about it? Why did I look into it? Learning something new doesn’t have to be motivated by a lucrative outcome. If an adult can learn something from a fact book, just imagine where a child’s mind can go with that information.
Magnify Your Style 
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