What was claimed
Tesco is not celebrating Christmas this year, rebranding its Christmas trees as “evergreen” or “alpine” trees.
Our verdict
This is misleading. The retailer describes at least one of its trees as “evergreen”, but it continues to sell other artificial trees labelled as Christmas trees on its website.
Recent social media posts have claimed retailer Tesco is “no longer celebrating Christmas,” that they “have decided to REBRAND their Christmas trees to ‘Evergreen” or claim they are not selling Christmas trees at all. This is misleading.
While the pictures show genuine Tesco products that don’t appear to include the word “Christmas”, a search on the retailer’s website reveals an array of artificial trees and decor which are described as “Christmas” products.
A Tesco spokesperson told Full Fact the “evergreen” tree product was described as such “to make it clear which type of Christmas tree is inside the box and help customers to distinguish between the many Christmas trees in the range”.
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Tesco shared an image with us of an “alpine” tree similar to the one pictured in some of these posts. The image showed it being sold in a store on a pallet box saying “Merry Christmas”.
The spokesperson added: “We are proudly celebrating Christmas at Tesco and have a range of real and artificial Christmas trees in store as part of a wide selection of Christmas products to help our customers celebrate Christmas this year.”
A recent article in the Daily Telegraph carried criticism of Tesco’s decision to use the term ‘evergreen tree’ but it also lists a variety of items in the store’s Christmas range, including trees.
It’s important to consider whether content you see on social media tells the full story before sharing it with others. Our toolkit can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because Tesco is selling a number of artificial trees on its website labelled as Christmas trees.
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Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.