Out On A Limb: 10 Amazing Alternative Christmas Trees


Though traditional Christmas decorating may be in vogue these days, there’s always one guy/gal/family on the block that tosses tradition out the window… along with the traditional Christmas tree. These 10 amazing alternative Christmas trees celebrate the urge to be different while saving the spirit of the season only a tall, tapering, tinseled Tannenbaum can instill.

Pac-Man Christmas Tree

(images via: The Pirata and Insanely Gaming)

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the… plain old bark & needles Christmas tree? No Señor! Fire up Feliciano’s “Felice Navidad” and get your game to Madrid, where the one & only Pac-Man Christmas Tree brings good cheer and ghost gobblin’ goodness to the Spanish capitol’s Plaza Castilla. At least it did, in December of 2007, but that was enough to ensconce the pyramidal non-Pine in alternative Xmas history. Check out this video and see it live (sort of).

Godzilla Christmas Tree

(images via: Hayata-san’s Photo Gallery, Neatorama and Mayurin)

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire… emanating from the radioactive reptilian throat of an enormous, roaring monster! What can we say, they do Christmas a bit “differently” in Japan. Take the diode-studded, Santa-hat-wearing, extra-terrestrially Xmas-y Godzilla Christmas Tree that got shoppers at Tokyo’s Aqua City Odaiba mall in a buying mood. It’s an interesting marketing concept, as previous appearances of the fire-breathing, train-munching beast would typically send panicked crowds fleeing for their lives.

Sprite Plastic Bottle Christmas Tree

(images via: Damn Cool Pictures)

What does one do with 40,000 empty plastic Sprite bottles? Use them to build a very green (in every sense of the word), 42-ft tall Christmas Tree – that is, if one can rouse themselves from their diabetic coma to do so, and the one in question happens to be Lithuanian artist Jolanta Smidtiene. The plastic fantastic Christmas Tree can be found in the city of Kaunas, Lithuania, and glows an eerie, near-nuclear shade of green at night when it’s lit by spotlights.

Christmas Tree of Sardines

(images via: 3yen, Sea Paradise and VOA News)

I see your 40,000 Sprite bottles and raise you 50,000 sardines! At least, the Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise does, and right around this time of year. Now don’t fret, this rather fishy holiday display may look like a giant Bass-o-matic but be assured no spinning metal blades are employed (until later, at the teppanyaki table). Instead, precisely directed feeding induces the sardine swarm to swirl themselves into an iridescent cyclone of Christmas cheer. Delightful, until the waterlogged presents are opened.

Christmas Tree of Books

(images via: A Green Living, UBC Library and Maliens)

Paging a Christmas tree? The nice folks at the Gleeson Library in San Francisco must be reading your mind with this, er, novel idea. The festive librarians aren’t the only ones to fashion green-bound books into extraordinary Christmas trees and why not? As Kenny Rogers once said, “It’s the wood that makes it good”… even if the trees are made from wood pulp fiction.