Me and my SO are at odds again, this time about Christmas trees. He wants a fake one, I want a real one. I like the way real ones smell, nothing beats the smell. He doesn’t want the mess & the watering. Opinions?
If I were to buy a tree I’d buy a real one.
The fake ones make me think of my grandparents and the 70s. Just so tacky. Although I guess they look better nowadays, but still.
Personally, I go for fake. Scratchy throats and watery eyes just don’t get me in the holiday spirit. Never understood the fascination with the smell. To me Christmas is supposed to smell like fresh-baked cookies and roasting ham. I can get a forest smell any time of the year by, well, going out into a forest.
But as to your problem sufficiently… would it work for you two if you got a real tree and you took on the job of watering it and cleaning up after it?
Dammit, that should be “your problem specifically”. Sorry, I’ve been up with a sick baby two nights running now 
Fake all the way. That’s what we had when I was a kid. I fondly remember the yearly ritual of dragging all the pieces out of the basement and assembling it.
Fake! Save the forests! Besides, they’re reusable and don’t harbor unpleasant surprises 
fake. they become part of the family.
Another vote for fake here.
I bought a fake tree 4 years ago, and it’s been great. You assemble it (the kids love to help), and it always looks perfect.
I decided to go fake because the real trees I bought never looked even close to perfect after decorated – they always looked lopsided and ikky basically. Also, I had to constantly water the tree, and the needles fall off anyway whether I watered it or not. That made not only a constant mess to keeping vacuuming up but was also a hazard for the littlest kiddies.
Kinda cancels itself out. If it’s fake, it ain’t a Christmas tree.
Now I’ll give you that there are fakes out there that require a second look to determine, but still.
Besides, if you have a fake, you can’t drag it out to the back yard in early January and let it sit until warm weather when all the snow melts, noticing how evenly brown all of the needles on the tree have become until you hit it with a match and watch the entire tree become completely engulfed in flames in just under 3 seconds.
Or am I just a redneck?
As **flodnak ** said, if you want a real one then you take care of it. I couldnt careless one way or the other. I know that if my SO wanted a real one, we would get a real one. I’d be cleaning it up and watering it to. So I would probably do a little arguing against a real one as well even if I didnt really care.
dead0man
Perhaps you could compromise with your husband by going the fake route with the tree and purchasing or making a fresh wreath for the smell.
Can you still find potted Christmas trees?
I like real trees but three things make me decide on dragging out the fake one.
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I refuse to pay upwards of $30.00 for something I’m going to have to toss in a wood chipper in three weeks after messing with the needles and watering and keeping the cat from climbing into it (she’s not much interested in a fake tree for some reason).
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I’m allergic to the damn things and since I’m the one that has to decorate it and take it down, I end up with the scratches that turn into nasty red welts that last for days, the sneezing, the watery eyes.
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Quite a few of my ornaments are heavy and on a real tree, I have to bury the ornaments far back on the limbs to get the right support for them and you end up not being able to see them.
Spritle, your post describes why the Pundits switched to fake. Soon after putting it up, it became very clear that our lovely tree was a fire trap. It didn’t take ANY water, which was the first bad sign. And when the ornaments fell off (which they frequently did because the branches were so brittle), it was like putting an ornament on a cactus. Once while vacuuming (for the 300th time since the thing dropped needles like an epileptic seamstress), I backed up into the thing and was amazed to find that I no longer suffered from joint pain. (acupuncture humor). Anyway, it was so bad we didn’t turn on the twinkly lights for fear it would WHOOOSH into a giant fireball. (Isn’t turpentine made from pine trees?)
So we took it down the day after Xmas and I went directly to the nearest Walmart and bought a fake one. They aren’t nearly as darling as the real ones, granted, but at least they aren’t fire hazards.
We’ve always had a fake one - it’s just easier all around. Especially in Florida where it’s too doggone warm - I’m suspicious of the cut trees sitting in lots for weeks on end. My folks used to get a live tree with the root ball, and after the holidays and the thaw, they’d plant 'em in the yard. But old age and bad backs have stopped that tradition.
When we move to Md, we may do the balled-root-tree thing for a while, or maybe not… who knows?
Can’t have either. I have two rather unreasonable cats, who would desstroy the tree on the first night. So I help my parents trim their tree. They get a real one every year. I suspect they want to get a fake one, but one of my dad’s friends owns a flower shop and gives them a tree evrey year. They begrudgingly take it and the kids go over evrey year to decorate it.
There’s something sad about a killed tree. And something fake about a fake one. For several years I did not have a tree. (Little point in it, since I live alone and there are no presents under it and no one to see it anyway.) But for the last few years I’ve gone to Target and bought a small living tree. I usually get a 2 1/2 foot tree, but they have them up to 4 feet. I put the tree on a cabinet and put a Snow blanket around the pot, then put an N-gauge train around it. I decorate it with a garland, lights, and ornaments (I buy one new onrament a year), and everyone in the office thinks it’s neat. I water it every few days.
The best part is that after Christmas I give it away to one of my co-workers so they can take it home and plant it. How many killed trees are bought every year? Thirty million? Fifty million? I don’t know. But imagine if everyone bought a living tree, and then planted it after the holidays. Think of all of the trees that will be planted and will continue to suck the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and pump oxygen back in! I think that’s much better than killing a tree (even though most are grown for the purpose) and then dumping it into a landfill to take up space and decompose and release its CO[sub]2[/sub].
This year, please consider a living tree.
I vote for NO tree! Our house is about 1000 sq. ft. and the first year we put up a (fake) tree (in the only spot it could possibly go) it was a royal pain in the butsky. We had to keep walking around it and the cats kept knocking the decorations. We’d both had enough and we got rid of it at the first opportunity. Now we just put up a nice garland across the window and decorate that.
Fake baby. Gives me a chance to erect a structure that’s taller than me. And even though they cost more money, they pay for themselves in 3 or 4 years dont’ they? Quite the economical purchase IMHO
Many Crows: All the more reason to get a living tree. You can get one as small as about 12". Even a four-foot living tree won’t take up much room. And you can plant it later.
Make a forest!
I love Christmas, and the tree issue is like a pine needle in my side.
Growing up, we always had real trees. One year, I decided to protest the murder of the trees, and so we got a living tree in a pot. At the time, we bought the largest tree in a pot that we could find – it was about 4 feet tall. In the past, our dead trees had always been about 9 feet tall. So we get the living tree home, and try to decorate it, and essentially it looks like a bush, and the ornaments fall off. I have a severe allergic reaction to having a live tree in the house. Later, when we plant it in the backyard, it dies. My brother started calling me “The Girl Who Ruined Christmas” (which, fyi, he still does on occasion to annoy me.
Now, we have a dead tree, mostly because we live in an apartment and have nowhere to store a fake tree during the year. Someday, I would like to get a fake tree, and I am torn between getting one of those fake ones that looks unbelievably real, and getting a white tree and going all out with the 1950s retro look.