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It belongs in the dining room, greenish brown, smelling of resin. Golden, red and silver decorations hang from its branches. A few sweets, popcorn streamers.
At its feet is a letter to Father Christmas and gift packages for the ‘grown-ups’, those for uncles, grandparents, mum and dad.
In this part of the world, the Christmas tree is a real fir tree, which smells of cold air and ash. But for those who live in the sun all year round, it becomes a cocoa plantation, a lime tree grove, a mango forest.
Christmas is a banana plantation.
Evergreen
The lights come on early in the house during winter. It is already dark.
The sun tires after lunch, the days are short and the rhythm of things settles at the bottom of autumn, waiting for the season of rebirth.
In the hemisphere opposite us, however, summer is in full swing. The light and warmth of the sun are natural and powerful. And there are no fir trees.
Christmas still falls on 25 December.
The tradition of the tree is pagan, native to Europe. Religions have nothing to do with it, nor do beliefs. We celebrate a fact that is obvious to all peoples: the cyclical nature of Nature.
The live tree branch in the home reminds us that even after the harshest winter, we rise again, we are reborn. Spring always comes. There is a new beginning that insists on raising its head and looking straight ahead, towards the new horizon.
The Transpack Group, of which Nesite is a part, celebrates this thanksgiving of hope every day of the year. Without decorations or white-dyed pine needles. Without strings of flashing lights, confessions, or binge eating. Without waste.
The meaning of true Christmas, of sharing and gratitude, has deep and strong roots that cover miles of land. Roots that provide work, dignity and independence. To women, people with disabilities, families, communities.
Thanks to its collaboration with Treedom, the Transpack Group takes care of an entire forest, which is also an entire family, which is also an entire, small society of different lives and values.
A Christmas that is also different, always green.
One thousand three hundred guardians
The Transpack Group Forest has 1,300 trees in Guatemala, Malawi and Ecuador, each with its own identity document. One thousand three hundred plant names, one thousand three hundred profile photos, one thousand three hundred guardians who virtually follow their growth, supporting every stage of their life cycle.
A forest that we see from a screen, imagining it beyond the window of our dining room. But it is present and real in the air we breathe, in the migrations of flamingos, in springs full of pollen and bees, in stories, sacrifices and miracles overseas.
The project is a natural extension of the values that the Group believes in and supports: environmental regeneration, economic growth, social integration, and improving the quality of life of local populations.
Because every space, like every person, has the power to be reborn countless times.
One thousand three hundred trees that reprocess our pollution to restore dignity, food and a future. Trees from which a thousand other lives are born, not only green ones.
A real gift
After all, a Christmas tree and a Treedom tree are quite similar. In fact, more than a little.
One is the star of our homes during this season. The other is one of the main actors in this world show.
One welcomes the dreams of our children, the other makes it possible for people in distant lands to dream too.
One is a symbol of rebirth. The other is, in effect, rebirth itself.
Both tell us the same truth: we have a duty and a need to protect the future, in our ideas and concrete actions, to nurture it and believe in its arrival. Even if our contribution is small.
By planting each tree, Transpack demonstrates in concrete terms the meaning of giving – at this time of year, it is easy to overlook this, as it is right before our eyes. Giving does not end under the tree. It is a circular and perpetual gesture, which pulsates every day of the year and is reborn, in its meaning, just when everything seems to be over, crumpled up.
A gift that multiplies. Like real gifts.
Infinite times
In many ancient cultures, the forest was considered a sacred place where humans and nature coexisted without conflict, one the rib of the other.
Today, very little of that enchantment remains, and perhaps an entire forest is not enough to surprise us with that ancient alliance. But even from that seed fallen between the rocks or on the concrete, the sprout is a new beginning.
The best wish we can make for ourselves, as human beings, is to be ourselves, sprouting where no one expects fruit, roots for someone, support for something that is not yet there.
This is how a ‘forest’ grows.
Tree after tree. Person after person. Beginning after beginning.
Until the next New Year, when everything begins again.
The Forest Transpack Group | Umaneco by Nesite ©all rights reserved
Texts edited by Chiara Foffano – Illustrations by Ariele Pirona
Megiston