These plastic concoctions (sometimes also made using glass or other glittery materials), resembling trees that would otherwise not make it to adulthood in tropical Singapore, can be found everywhere in December acting as the primary symbol of the winter festival know as Christmas. It is often found together with other crudely fashioned seasonal knick-knacks such as a fat bearded man in red (see image at right) and his reindeer escorts. Sometimes, a Styrofoam  "snowman" is also positioned to further add a winter feel to the simulation. The displays often attract the curiosity of the resident Homo sapiens, who appear to find great fun in posing in front of the many contraptions, and in recording the event with their mobile devices. Carefully documented below are some of these curious displays for the Earth year 2007.

See also: Tim Burton's The Nightmare before Christmas for an accurate depiction of this human jubilee as well as that of its closely related, and even more absurd festival Halloween.

I'm never inspired to take any pictures when I'm in Singapore, but now that I've got a camera in my mobile, I just can't help but snap a couple whenever there's some event going on; festivals always get me all hyped up. Surprisingly, the inconsequential lens on my mobile can take quite nice looking shots, after some editing of course. While I'd rather have a P or M function on my camera, I guess it's a trade-off with having to lumber along with a bigger camera. I noticed that the commercial entities this year are based around character good. The Capitaland-owned malls all have Barbie as the Island Princess I think, and PP has Disney characters!

Poor Donald, he's all alone in every single shot! Mickey's also such a stiff (he might as well be a cardboard cutout), but luckily he has the other two posing to make the shots interesting. Did you know that Mickey and Minnie are actually married, and that Minnie is a nickname for Minerva? Useless facts....

Suntec, on the other hand, seems to be going with Warner Bros, with Carrefour displaying a giant pseudo-caged-up Tweety. Guess we're supposed to imagine the rest of the cage rails. There were also a couple of narcissistic polar bears in the shop proper. Yup, they're victims of the social malaise that plagues all capitalist societies where it's all about the individual. :P