In view of the energy crisis, the German Environmental Aid has called for Christmas lights to be abandoned in cities and private households.
"This winter it should be a matter of course that both the Christmas lights in cities and those in houses and apartments will be dispensed with," said Federal Managing Director Jürgen Resch to the newspapers of the editorial network Germany on Monday.
"In view of the war in Ukraine, the energy shortage, but also for reasons of climate protection, we should pause for a moment," he explained.
Resch pointed out the power consumption.
"The private lighting orgies alone cause a power consumption of over 600 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year - as much as a medium-sized city with 400,000 inhabitants consumes in a year."
Resch suggested one illuminated tree per city and municipality.
“Perhaps this can be reduced to one illuminated tree per community.
Consciously doing without here, saving and showing solidarity could even make this Christmas season a very special one.”
Save energy or increase prices
But not only the illuminated tree, but also what lies underneath could be affected by the high energy prices this year.
The toy industry expects prices to rise in the Christmas business.
"The increases by the manufacturers are likely to be around 5 to 6 percent on average," said Ulrich Brobeil, managing director of the German Association of the Toy Industry (DVSI), the Düsseldorf "Rheinische Post" on Monday.
According to Brobeil, in a representative survey of the 215 member companies, 83 percent also assume that price increases are an option in addition to savings in energy costs.
45 percent said the business was "strongly to very badly" at risk, while 38 percent of those surveyed saw it as "moderately" threatened.
In the case of individual items, there could be delivery problems because parts from Asia are missing.
However, there are no general delivery problems.