#HTE

How Fast Can a Christmas Tree Catch on Fire?

Each year about 200 families in America will experience Christmas tree fires, proving to their children that Santa Claus does not love them.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, the culprits are usually faulty or overloaded lighting and/or placing the tree too close to a heat source. But by simply watering your tree daily, you can vastly reduce the chances that your tree will completely go up in smoke. A watered tree will still burn, but may give you time to do something about it; on the other hand when a dry tree catches ablaze, it really catches ablaze. Here’s the difference:

Pretty freaking dramatic, and that dry tree fire would’ve been even worse if they’d followed my family’s tradition of giving each other wrapped boxes of oily rags as presents.

Anyways I was going over the NFPA stats on Christmas tree fires and found this bizarre statistic, buried down at the bottom of the page:

One quarter (24%) of Christmas tree fires were intentional.

Uh…what?!?

Every year 50 families intentionally torch their own trees? How unhappy with your gift do you have to be to express that level of displeasure?