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| - The newly elected mayor of Bordeaux found himself the target of widespread criticism Friday after vowing to do away with the French city's traditional Christmas tree this winter as part of his pro-environment agenda. Pierre Hurmic was one of several Greens mayors swept into power in major French cities during municipal elections last June, one of the biggest electoral advances for the party in years. He raised eyebrows Thursday while unveiling a series of replanting projects, taking aim at the towering tree decorated every year in the historic central square next to the Bordeaux cathedral. "We are not going to put dead trees in our squares, in particular on the square Pey-Berland -- you remember that dead tree they brought in every year. That is not our conception of re-vegetation at all," Hurmic said. Instead the city will create an "animated spectacle" and use the money saved to help charities as well as businesses hurt by the coronavirus crisis, he said. Critics were quick to pounce, accusing the mayor of scorning a cherished holiday ritual that had only a negligible environmental impact. "Total nonsense!" tweeted Bordeaux's former deputy mayor Fabien Robert, who began an online petition against the plan. "It's the tree that hides the forest of Bordeaux's real problems." The brouhaha was the latest to emerge over perceived challenges by Green officials to beloved French symbols. On Wednesday, Gregory Doucet, the new Greens mayor of Lyon, which will host a Tour de France stage finish this weekend, called the world-famous cycle race "macho and polluting" and said he would not welcome it back as long as it was not "environmentally responsible." "Call me old school if you want, but Christmas trees, the Tour de France and all these traditions that unite us will always be the bedrock of our society," Xavier Bertrand, the prominent right-wing president of the northern Hauts de France region, said on Twitter. President Emmanuel Macron's deputy Interior Minister, Marlene Schiappa, also weighed in, accusing Greens mayors of prohibiting "everything that brings a bit of joy or festivity." "They're worse than ideologues; they're killjoys," she tweeted. But mayor Hurmic's deputy Harmonie Lecerf defended the move, rejecting claims that greens were attacking "the magic of Christmas." "Seriously, installing a tree that costs several tens of thousands of euros each year, for a single big tree that ends up in the trash, you call that magical?" she posted. bpe-pbl/pjl/tes/sjw/tgb
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