There may still be friends to see, parties to attend, and cookies to eat, but the true sign that Christmas is over is starting to appear on local sidewalks.”We probably got 100 of them this morning,” Scott Frary, of Nahant Public Works, said Tuesday afternoon as he picked up a shapely but rather sadly naked Christmas tree. “You should have seen it.”Alas, there were only wood chips and a few boughs left at the compost pile in Nahant … and a similar fate awaits trees of residents in most area communities.Nahant Public Works and the Marblehead Highway Department have begun picking up trees as they see them on local curbs and at the end of driveways. But most area communities have scheduled days where residents can have their trees picked up and disposed of.In Lynn, the Department of Public Works will be picking up trees on the week of Jan. 5-9 on residents’ regular trash days. In addition, the yard-waste area – or stump dump – on Commercial Street will be open on Jan. 17.Saugus will pick up trees the first two weeks of January. Swampscott will pick up trees on a resident’s regularly scheduled trash day during week of Jan. 5, and then will also have a yard-waste pickup day on Feb. 2.Most of the trees will be chipped up to be recycled into wood chips or compost – but for some trees, this fate involves way more than a chipper and brush pile.”They take everything from food waste to Christmas trees, stumps, leaves, grass clippings, etc …” explained John Tognazzi, general manager of Hiltz Waste Disposal. “It’s almost something you would do in your backyard – you put sticks over here, and leave clippings there, etc. – but on a much bigger scale.”The Hiltz “Tree Truck” will join the company’s regular recycling and trash trucks in Swampscott during the first week of January and then will drop the trees off at Brick Ends Farm in Hamilton.”Eventually they put it in this big chipper, and then mix it with horse manure, and sell it,” Tognazzi said.Some towns, however, prefer a more spectacular end to the Christmas tree.Hamilton and Wenham residents can lug their trees to Patton Park for a bonfire Jan 6. Marblehead used to have a similar annual event at Riverhead Beach, but it was canceled due to construction on the seawall in the 2007. The Tree Department referred questions to the Board of Health as to why the event was not resumed.”We’re looking on bringing it back,” Marblehead Director of Public Health Andrew Petty said Tuesday. He said the Board of Health didn’t have a problem with the event, but that it would need to be planned out more in advance … as the park and recreation department uses the area to store floats during the winter.But Frary, in Nahant, would not recommend that one try to burn an individual tree – it’s green, unseasoned wood, with lots of sap that is unpleasant enough to deal with even before it gets burned onto your fireplace. Plus, the tree will not burn hot enough to avoid leaving highly flammable creosote along the chimney flue.Better to let it go back to nature – but in a properly recycled way.Nahant’s a small town, but every spring, Frary said they find a few Christmas trees kicked to the curb after sitting in a backyard all winter. He described them simply as “a mess.”