Offside: Oh, Christmas tree!

Over the years, some municipal Christmas trees get into the news simply because they are so awful. It seems there is almost a competition to erect the worst Christmas tree in Flanders. Last year was a head-to-head contest between Brussels, where the electric tree looked like a gigantic apothecary’s sign, and Hasselt, where the tree looked like – and in fact was – a cone of blue-and-white dishes.

This year London tried to muscle in, with a Christmas tree on the South Bank with fairy-lights powered by 1,000 Brussels sprouts connected to electrodes. A very Belgian attempt, but much too interesting to succeed.

This year In Eeklo, East Flanders, they did away with a real tree in the Markt and settled for a three-metre polar bear posing by the fountain and a five-metre 3D virtual tree. The real trees, 30 of them, will be placed along the N9.

However Offside’s tip for the outright winner this year goes to Krombeke, a sub-division of Poperinge in West Flanders, which has installed what must be the most pathetic, tragic Christmas tree ever, a random collection of branches strung up from a telephone pole. It gathered more than 400 Likes against it on a Facebook page (which has since been taken down – unlike the tree).

“We had no other choice,” explained Paul Carbon, secretary of the local festivities committee. “Every year we try to get a tree for free, but that isn’t easy in such a small community. It didn’t work out this year, so we went looking for ourselves, and this is what we found.”