Every year in January, New York has a "mulchfest." All discarded Christmas trees are collected and shredded. The mulch is a valuable resource and free. You may as well get some return on your investment. Use the mulch. If you don't want it, use it for a community garden maybe in a park.

If you're shredding it all, it can go on the compost heap, should rot down much quicker in that condition.

Something that could be important - can you please clarify what "thinstems" means?
If it is the invasive weed "horsetails" (try Google images to see) - then putting stem fragments back on your garden as compost or mulch would be a really bad idea as it would spread the problem even more.

Hmm, good point Longleaf - I thought Tercol was referring to thin ivy stems, but that's not actually clear from the question...

Bamboo beat me to the punch - Good point Longleaf! I guess it's not like Christmas trees.

Thankyou everyone but no not weeds, some kind of bushes. All the thin stems are younger shoots from the root level, I havent noticed flowers during the summer but this piece is tucked away round a corner and we temporarily fenced it off due to the water and very young grandchildren visiting(safer to remove the risk knowing how quick they can run) the stems are almost like forsythia as they have grown straight. There were some wild blackberry, but the ivy is all over the ground and will not be put in the shredder. Our local recycling centre told hubby had to be into shorter lengths if he takes it, so we might as well just shred it ourselves, some of the larger branches from overhanging trees are approx 3in diameter, some were just plain fallen and rotten!

we have a 8 x 10 trailer and took 2 loads to the centre but there are at least another 20 loads to go if we dont shred, the piece of land is approx 18ft by 24ft so quite a big area!

Yhank you all for the advice could I put any of the mulch onto my heather bed which has a monkey puzzle tree in the centre or will I kill anything?

There is a drawback with using uncomposted, freshly chipped materials - they take nitrogen from the soil during the breakdown process, and that may leave your other plants short of nitrogen. The usual way round it in planted areas is to apply something like Growmore granules first, then spread the mulch, but that can't be done at this time of year - spring or up to end of June is fine. If you can compost the shreddings first, that would be very useful to your beds and borders.

Thank you bamnoo wull put them in a composter