Trafalgar Square Christmas tree for voluntary or charitable organisations. The tree remains until just before the Twelfth Night of Christmas, when it is taken down for recycling. The tree is chipped and composted, to make mulch. The Trafalgar Square Christmas tree is typically a 50- to 60-year-old Norway spruce, generally over 20 metres tall. The tree is cut in Norway sometime in November during a ceremony attended by the British Ambassador to Norway, Mayor of Oslo, and Lord Mayor of Westminster. After the tree is cut, it is shipped to the UK by boat across the sea. At one time it was shipped to
Christmas tree of the oldest references to the Christmas tree: "Note on how to put the Christmas branch, "scilicet": On the Christmas eve, you will look for a large Branch of green laurel, and you shall reap many red oranges, and place them on the branches that come of the laurel, specifically as you have seen, and in every orange you shall put a candle, and hang the Branch by a rope in the pole, which shall be by the candle of the "altar-mor"." The relevance of ancient pre-Christian customs to the 16th-century German initiation of the Christmas tree custom is disputed.