If you are allergic to pine nuts, does that mean you are also allergic to pine trees? I’ve gotten kind of itchy from real trees, but I thought perhaps it was just the needles and the sap…
For the first 8 or 9 years of my marriage we had a real tree. Then, about 3 years ago my wife and I were in evil Wally World where we realized that for the cost of about 2 live trees we could have a nice looking artificial tree. When I, the life long loather of stringing Christmas lights, saw that the artificial was pre-lit - well, that settled it. Now I trek to the basement, haul up the box, put together 3 pieces and plug it in. My kind of tree lighting!
For fragrance we use fresh pine boughs and wreaths around the house.
Real trees - except for the one year my dad and I lived with his girlfriend. She had a fake tree, so we used it. And that one year I was living in my boyfriend’s apartment. We had no tree. 
I’ve really never understood this. It seems so strange to take a perfectly good, growing tree, cut it down, and watch it die a slow death in your living room.
Nothing in my opinion is more beautiful than a tree outside covered with snow.
I really miss having a real tree, but count me in the allergy group. In fact, there are certain boxes of ornaments I have to let WhyKid and WhyDad put on, because once upon a time they were on a real tree and handling them makes me break out into hives.
Plus, I feel guilty murdering trees. Doesn’t go well with my tree-huggin’ hippie image.
(I do sneak some cloths soaked in pine essential oil into the stand though, which makes it smell like a real tree. It surprised me what a difference that made!)
You know, I’ve never really thought about it this way before.
I think I’ll buy four trees this year.
UrbanChic, arboreal sadist
Fake. Grew up with a fake one, have a fake one now, although I wish I could afford a better one - ours was supposed to be white, but is a nasty shade of urinary yellow; I guess the previous owners smoked a lot. My mom is allergic to pine, so I grew up with the ritual tree assembly - it was my job to fluff out the branches, my sister’s to put them on the tree, my dad’s to put the very top piece on, and my mom’s to bake chocolate chip cookies to eat while we decorated the finished product. Gunslinger is also allergic to pine, and so we are continuing the tradition of my childhood.
Fake.
It becomes, in a way, part of the family.
I remember when it was soooooo tall and now it seems rather short.
We’ll get a small real one this year and plant it out back.
I love real trees. That’s what I always had growing up.
Now what I do is get a potted tree. One of the little ones and decorate it with miniature ornaments. After Christmas is over I eventually (in March) take off the decorations and have a tree in the house until the following year.
The first one I did this with lasted two years. I had to move and couldn’t take the tree just then. My old roommate killed it. She felt so bad that she bought me a new one the following Christmas. That is now at my mother-in-laws house. I think I might go out soon and get another one.
We tend to go back and forth on this issue :rolleyes: We have a really tall skinny artificial tree that looks great when it is decorated, but most years we go for a real tree. A few years ago we put a real one up on our front porch and positioned it in front of our living room window so we could enjoy it inside…kind of the reverse of what we usually do and that was fun. So we just do whatever the spirit moves us to do.
The whole “tree putting-up” thing is a great memory from childhood. We always had a real tree and for some reason it was always a chore for my dad to get it to stand up right in that little 3-footed, red and green stand. Especially with 3 rambunctious kids trying their best to knock it down. I remember one year, in great frustration, he just went and got a hammer and nailed the stand to the hardwood floor. :eek: I thought that was so cool. My mom didn’t.
We did the live tree thing when I was a kid, and it was great. Now I’m a lazy grown-up and I prefer to have a fake tree. The reason? I can’t trek out to Grandpa’s Christmas Tree Farm and cut down a genuine Douglas Fir already adorned with a string of twinkly lights.
(I just bought my first pre-lighted (-lit?) tree on Monday and am very happy about it. It looks like this. 
)
I love real trees, but: 1) my house is very small and there’s no good place for a real tree and I don’t have anywhere to put a potted tree where it could survive the rest of the year, 2) it’s just me and putting up a real tree by yourself is a pain (yes, I could get help, but it would still be mostly me who enjoyed it and it seems like a waste of tree and hard work), 3) fake tree is so much easier, 4) I’m allergic to just about everything at the moment, so I’d probably start sneezing as soon as it got in the house.
So I’ll be putting up a 3-foot tabletop tree this year. Pre-lit, but I change the decorations each year. I have more ornaments than can fit on the tree, so it changes every year.
I should probably start to haul the decorations up from the basement…
GT
Every year I et a tree permit and saw down a nice fir tree for us. I never consider a fake tree because I like real trees, and I enjoy riding the snow machines out in the forrest to find that perfect tree.
If you have never sawed your own tree, don’t expect it too look like the ones for sale in the parking lot. They are usually much skimpier and not so bushy.
Real trees certainly look better, but for the last couple of years my family has had a fake tree. My parents run a retail puzzle store–a real Mom and Pop operation–and there is absolutely no time to do anything like get Christmas trees at this time of year. It is nice to have the greatly reduced hassle of the fake tree, and it’s nice not to have pine needles all over the floor come January.
We often had fake trees and I didn’t care very much although I liked the natural ones better.
Once my parents tried fake candles, that was atrocious.
Real tree - potted. When we were kids we’d kept it between six and ten feet, then when it was warm enough, dug a hole and replanted them. Tree at grandparent’s Xmas eve, Tree at ours earlier.
Had a potted tree (small) that we would drag in but it’s so big now that we just decorate it out side, usually with glow sticks. Once we get a little cash together (my folks keep it trimmed but it is still taller than the house) we’re going to rent the equipment needed to transport it from their house to ours and plant it in the back yard. Viola, instant 20 year old pine tree in our yard.
For inside my house - I don’t think that we’re going to be doing a tree again this year (haven’t since 1998 or 1999 :() but I am just getting a small potted tree I’ll put up in my office. Maybe by next year we’ll be doing a tree at home, if not I’ll just keep it as long as possible at work before transplanting it to the backyard or donating it to a local park.
Growing up, my family always had the live trees that weighed a ton but could be planted when you were done. Now, as an adult, I hate Christmas and the only “tree” I have ever used was a silver aluminum tree that I got at a yard sale for a quarter. It was great because it needed no decorations other than a strobe light. Then when christmas was over, I could take the top of the tree off and have all my friends ask why I had a little silver bush sitting in the corner.
Real tree.
Fake Festivus pole.
I think you just shouldn’t put up a tree if it’s fake. The point isn’t to have a big cone-shaped, spindly object in your house. The point is to have a TREE in your house.
The point of what? What is the purpose of having a real tree in your house, and how is the purpose not accomplished by having a decoration that doesn’t give you the sniffles?
The point of a christmas tree (to me) is not just having (again) a big “cone shaped spindly thing” in your house to decorate.
The point is to have a LIVING organism (or DYING organism) in your house.
There’s something funny and weird and crazy and nice about putting a big tree in your house. Going to get one, and seeing all the other people getting trees, and strapping it onto your car, getting it into a stand, is all part of the fun.
It’s kind of like the difference between going trick-or-treating and just going to the grocery store to buy a big bag of assorted candy. Who wants to have to buy a costume, walk around in the dark and the cold, knock on doors just for something you can get at the store.
If you’re allergic to an evergreen, that’s something different completely. Then just do whatever.