Moscow selling New Year trees

Today Moscow saw the beginning of usual pre-holiday New Year's tree sales. Anyone willing to buy a real fir beauty either big or small, depending on the size of the apartment or the purse, can easily do it here. The average price per tree is 150 roubles (a little less than 5 dollars) per meter.

The tradition to decorate a New Year's tree dates back to the times of Peter the Great who, in his turn, borrowed it from Europe. This year the ten-million Moscow will host over 500 New Year's tree sales, spread all over the city. The Moscow regional forestry has grown up a total of 450 thousand fir trees specially for the pre-New Year sales. Besides our "home" Moscow fir trees, local entrepreneurs have imported some from Denmark and Canada worth from one thousand roubles per meter, for rich Muscovites.

In the recent years Russia has been increasingly selling artificial fir trees, which only proves that efforts of environmentalists urging not to destroy natural trees for the sake of a short holiday have worked. However, most Russians still want their apartments to fill with a real coniferous smell for the New Year celebration.