Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
I read in “Welt am Sonntag” that right now would be a good time to buy a television. TVs are cheaper in January than in November. Because if you needed a television, you bought it in the run-up to Christmas.
But if you weren’t lucky enough to be in the right store with the right set in the post-Thanksgiving store on Black Friday, then you paid quite a bit for the TV. The reason for this is, unsurprisingly, Christmas, the great celebration of television giving.
Incidentally, it would also be a good time to purchase a leaf blower. Leaf blowers are ten percent cheaper in January than in September. Ten percent! This means that if you buy ten leaf blowers from a specialist retailer, you get an eleventh. What would you do with eleven leaf blowers? There are just a few leaves there now.
And the Christmas trees have already been cleared. Otherwise you could have used it to blow out the candles on the light tree. And if the Christmas tree had caught fire, you could have used the leaf blower as an apartment fire extinguisher. I don’t know if you can put out a tongue-in-cheek fire with a single leaf blower – but with eleven?
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Apart from the fact that LED bulbs instead of candles flicker on the tree in most living rooms, the trees are no longer in the living room, but on the street. There they should be taken away by the garbage disposal. This often works rather poorly because the garbage truck comes when the tree isn’t there, or the tree only comes after the garbage truck has already left. And then they lie there. The trees, of course.
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In big cities like Berlin, one might think that putting down the Christmas tree is just as much a cherished tradition as putting it up. Everywhere the streets are beautifully decorated with lying coniferous trees, in which the animals of the street, such as rats, find shelter from the winter.
Unfortunately, the Christmas trees are not there until after the turn of the year. If they were put down by December 31st, the city’s young people could light them on New Year’s Eve. This could also save a lot of firecrackers, which are very controversial. I suppose the remains of burning spruces could easily be disposed of on New Year’s. Maybe they could just be blown away with a leaf blower. Or eleven.
This could also become a nice custom: blowing the streets clean at the beginning of the year. Then, however, the prices for leaf blowers will rise again in January. I’d rather buy a TV.
More: Doing nothing, but better.