Oh Christmas tree

Have you ever grumbled about the needles that Christmas trees have a knack of spreading all over the floor? “One December day, my mother told us that she wanted a Christmas tree without needles that we wouldn’t have to change every year,” told us Jules Sarazin, creator of Mon sapin Woody®. Everything came together perfectly. Luc Sarazin, Jules’ father, is the manager of a carpenter’s shop in Genay that produces parts for technical doors. It may not be the elves’ workshop, but he began saving the offcuts to help give birth to Mon sapin Woody®, a needleless conifer with a streamlined design.

After making a few copies for their own living room and then their friends and family, Luc and Jules Sarazin started getting a steady stream of orders. So they decided to open their company Marcel & Eugène in Fontaines-sur-Saône: “Since we started up five years ago, we’ve doubled our production each year. In 2022, we reached around 15,000 units and, in 2023, 30,000 Christmas trees will be leaving our workshop to be distributed all over France and in Europe.”

The offcuts from the carpenter’s shop in Genay are no longer enough to produce so many noble wooden Christmas trees, but the company is still committed to limiting its environmental footprint: the wood used to make Mon sapin Woody® is sourced from responsibly managed French forests.

© Mon Sapin Woody

Of all the trees most lovely…

Beyond its environmental credentials, Mon sapin Woody® performs superbly in the charm department: from the smallest models (40 cm tall, €24) to the tallest (300 cm tall, €519), its simple and graphic outline looks splendid dressed in tinsel and baubles.

If just the sight of an assembly manual is enough to fill you with dread, fret not: Mon sapin Woody® can be put up (and taken down; here's looking at you, Grinch) with the snap of a finger. Simply place the stand (the bigger models come with a stand in two parts, but we’ve been assured there’s nothing tricky about it) and arrange the supplied strips of wood in ascending order as you express your creativity: “There’s an almost infinite range of possible Christmas tree shapes to create, such as in a spiral or ear-of-wheat pattern,” enthuses Jules. If this Christmas tree doesn’t impress Father Christmas, we don’t know what will!

See them on Saturdays in December at the Marcel & Eugène workshop or visit the website.