In September 2020, a few words said by the environmentalist mayor of Bordeaux were enough to launch a major controversy that still continues: “We will not put dead trees in the town square. “ So, for 2021, Pierre Hurmic has decided to think big. This time, the replacement project of “The dead tree” which will be installed from December 11 to January 2 is 11 meters high by 5 meters in diameter. A work of art, a glass cone shaped from recycled materials (recycled glass and steel) and recyclable, made in the Bordeaux metalwork workshop. The artist, Arnaud Lapierre, has already experimented with this installation in Saint Petersburg, with a work 6 meters high.

In Bordeaux, he offers a new concept, but the principle of glass panels, emerald-colored one-way mirrors, remains the same. A work which is intended to be installed each year and whose investment should quickly pay off, according to the municipality, an alternative to the 60,000 euros spent each year for the Bordeaux fir tree.

National scope

It must be said that in 2020 the “sapingate” had quickly taken on a national scale, in particular on social networks: “Call me old world if you like, but the Christmas tree, the Tour de France and all these traditions that unite us will always be the glue of a society”, declared the president of the Hauts-de-France region, Xavier Bertrand. “In fact, the EELV mayors [Europe Ecologie-Les Verts], that’s all that brings a little joy or celebration that they forbid! They are worse than ideologists: they are a killjoy ”, had tweeted Marlène Schiappa, Minister responsible for citizenship. As for Marine Le Pen, she considered that the representatives of EELV “Have a visceral rejection of everything that makes up our country, our traditions, our culture and will seek to dismantle everything piece by piece”. And if the mayor of Bordeaux had been offered a tree from the deputy of Gironde Benoît Simian, he also received threats, and lodged a complaint.

Is the artistic solution proposed by the town hall this year of nature to calm the anger of the defenders of the Christmas tree? Verdict on December 11, when the work will be unveiled in Bordeaux.