Here’s why some people find Melania Trump’s blood-red Christmas trees so strangely creepy
- A psychologist says the unnatural-looking decorations bring to mind ‘blood or rage, shock’
- However, the White House says the crimson trees suggest ‘valour and bravery’
Shortly after Melania Trump unveiled the White House’s Christmas decor on Monday, one key design element – a “forest” of cone-shaped, crimson trees – spurred tongue-in-cheek uproar on Twitter.
These 40 meme-ready trees were compared to car-wash brushes, juxtaposed with iconic blood waves in Stephen King’s The Shining and Photoshopped to don white bonnets – a clear reference to the long-suffering women in Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.
While much of the lampooning was surely prompted by disdain toward her husband’s policies, several psychology experts said that Trump’s holiday aesthetic may just be inherently jarring for the human psyche.
Dr Toby Israel, a pioneer of design psychology, said the heavily red set-up detaches viewers from nature, thus the psychological comfort associated with the natural world.
“So, for example, we have a green Christmas tree, that’s about nature – and the best that nature has to offer,” whereas with these towering red plants: “I’m not going to recognise that is a tree, [as] something that connects us to the universe.”
The red trees also “have the association of not just being different, but “during an era that feels particularly violent and divided, Israel said.