I’m not surprised that someone actually went ahead with this bowdlerization.

I’ve always loved the original but my ex hated it for the same reason as Stefanie Tavakoli. I understand but the original has a kind of wistful and beautiful sadness to it that I still respond to. By the end of the story the man has tried all sorts of ways to be happy but he’s just a broken old man. The tree is a stump. They sort of belong together. The old man has taken everything the tree could give but none of it resulted in lasting happiness and so there he is sitting on an old tree stump. The tree gave away everything in order to be happy and in the end although there was almost nothing left of it the giving tree managed to give once more. Who found happiness?