Christmas tree vandalism

[isabellerossignol]

I had a day out yesterday and drive through quite a few rural villages and a couple of small towns and noticed that all of them had a sort of cage around the bottom of their Christmas tree and the lights starting about half way up, to prevent vandalism.

Then I realised that in my area (large town with about half a dozen villages surrounding it) this Christmas alone about four of the Christmas trees locally have been vandalised, and a couple of villages have given up putting Christmas decorations up at all, as every year they were destroyed.

I don't live in a particularly 'bad' area, it feels very safe here and crimes such as theft and burglary are very low. But vandalism is constant.

Is it like this all over the UK or am I just unlucky to live somewhere that is particularly obsessed with vandalism? It's really depressing.

I saw a post on Reddit the other day with a short video of some young kids smashing baubles on a tree in a village. I have no idea because I've moved to Oz but interested in other's replies.

What about in Oz? Is this sort of thing a problem there?

It happened in our area too. Really awful.

Fine near us

This is the Christmas tree in a town centre locally. The teens that plague the town centre are responsible, they were probably looking to use the baubles to throw at passing cars.

It doesn't happen where I live.
Many of the shops have smallish trees outside, fully decorated, and no-one touches them.
I'm in the Netherlands.

Our village tree is very near 3 pubs - fences are up round the tree to stop drunks trying to climb it on their walk home

In our little village the Christmas tree was vandalised within a few dats of putting it up. We fixed it though and keep a close eye on it (cameras at the shops now face in that direction).
It’s never happened before.

I live in a small-ish market town. It’s not perfect but we’ve had no vandalism of our Christmas tree and it’s not caged. I guess we’ve been lucky. Fingers crossed that it stays that way.

I just don't get it. I have been a teenager myself, I've been bored. At no point did I think that the best way to relieve my boredom was vandalism.

My nearest village is the sort of place where people regularly forget to lock their doors. Burglary, car theft etc are almost unheard of. But vandalism is constant. For years people moaned about the village being run down and looking bad. Residents raised thousands, putting their hands in their own pockets, for landscaping work and some bits of street sculpture etc. It was less than 48 hours before the flowers were pulled out, the fences kicked down and the sculptures kicked out of shape.