Holidays: To tree or not to tree?

You can get artificial tree smell in a can. And I think the fake trees look better and are easier to deal with than the real ones. Plus the whole killing a tree for a few weeks of the holiday doesn't make much sense to me.

 

Of course, trees like these are just a farmed crop like any other. There is no real ecological reason for not having one.

I'm not suggesting people SHOULD have one - just that there is no PC reason against them that I am aware of.

As for needles, I always hated them too - especially those sharp ones. I prefer the varieties with softer foliage (like the Fraser Fir, Douglas Fir or Blue Spruce) - and having a potted, living tree minimises needle drop.

The decorations thing can be tricky, post-divorce. I had a box full of decorations that are currently with my ex-wife. Some of these go back to my childhood and I am going over to her house shortly to see if I can retrieve some. Wish me luck!

 

We have a small artificial tree. It was my grandmother's, and putting it up reminds me of the 24 years I went to her house with the rest of my family on Christmas Eve (it's a Polish tradition to gather on Christmas Eve with your extended family and let the children each open one present a day early. Either that or they made that up and I believed it.) We had real trees for a few years, but they made for a miserable holiday season - when I was 15 or so I finally got around to seeing an allergist, who told me "reaction to each allergen is rated on a scale of 0 to 4 based on the size of the swelling at the injection site. For trees, you'd be between close to a 6 if the scale went that high." That year, we went back to the artificial tree.

My favorite holiday season tradition was from back in what I refer to as my "teenage shithead" phase. In the second week of January, the town would have Christmas Tree Pickup and bring all the trees back to the town dump to be shredded into mulch (if you have a dump permit, you can drop off any yard waste for free and pick up any mulch, compost dirt, etc. for free.) Weather permitting, I would go out with my brother and a couple of friends with a fence post digger and give those discarded trees one last day to bring joy when whatever neighborhood we picked would wake up on Monday morning to find everyone's trees planted upright next to their mailboxes.

 

Have a tree. And way too much crap around the house. Not by choice but my marriage. My wife's parents went over the top with decorating. So it's genetic. Doesn't mean I like it though. A tree would be fine, some other decorations would be ok. But in every room except for my office? No thank you.

 

While our kids were young we would set up a tree and decorate the house. It was fun enjoying that stuff with our children. Early on, we would have a real tree, but one year my MIL gave us an artificial tree as a gift and we surrendered to the convenience. With the kids grown, and the granddaughter 2000 miles away, we no longer get very excited about the season.

 

We have a fake tree but when we reclaimed it from the loft it became apparent that its days are at an end! It's had one too many cats climbing up it! Mum has bought a fake one from a sustainable source, so I presume its grown for the purpose. We will probably bring it in and decorate it next weekend, we tend to decorate the living room mid way through December.

 

'Holiday Lights' program festoons my monitor. I also have an advent calandar. That's it.

It has been ages since I have had a Christmas Tree, and if I visited someone, I'd not notice any absence.

 

We do a Christmas tree every year. I am an atheist. Christmas, for me, is not about Christ. For me it is about solstice (darkest days of the year turning in the lightest days), about family (for Americans, I treat it much like you would treat Thanksgiving) and friends.

I recognize that Christmas means many different things to many different people -- and I am okay with that. I may take the Christ out of Christmas but frankly, Christians took the Yule our of Yuletide and the Sol out of Solstice, a long time ago. To me, Christmas is and should be what you need it to be.

As for the tree, over the years we have had fake ones and real ones, but since we moved abroad, it's been real all the way. Part of this, is the smell of the tree. Another big part of this is our annual party for all of our friends. We just held it over the weekend and we like to give our friends (almost all ex-pats like us) a taste of traditional Christmas -- despite the fact that we are in the tropics.

We buy our trees from Ikea. Ikea brings the trees in from snowy 's backyard. So I like to think we have a little bit of snowy here with us.

 

genuinegirly, that makes perfect sense. All of my childhood memories of putting up a tree (mostly a small fake one) were of my mother and me working together to turn our little apartment (or at least one corner of it) into Christmas. We would watch the Christmas specials on TV and make Christmas cookies. There was never any pressure and (at least in my memory) it was always fun and relaxed.

Regardless of Christmas, try to create new traditions for your family. There are a number of things that we do with our kids every year that neither my wife or I ever did with our families. Don't let your Mom's baggage spill into your life any more than it has to.

 

To be fair, no-one is breaking into your house to put up a tree

We have an artificial one and it'll get put up once we finish painting the room where it is going to be.

Also, the whole fruit thing that genuinegirly mentioned - I'm all over that except it is mangoes, cherries, peaches and nectarines. Get with the season, GG!

 

Antipodean fruit mongers.

 

Have not put up a real or artificial tree since 2008

 

your absolutely right. but i do get comments like "you dont have a tree"?

feels like when i go to visit my parents and my mother seems to think that i need three plates of food even though im not hungry. " are you sure you're not hungry"??? here is an appetiser...and out come 3 plates

like i said.. i like the season.. i just dont like that people want me to accept that i should have a tree and that kids should be putting up decorations just because thats what they expect to be 'normal' for thwir family.

 

We have a tree because we've always had a tree, and both our families always had a tree. Our biggest fight over the tree was the crowning ornament... she came from a French Catholic background where a star was the norm (Acadians have a single star on their flag). I would have nothing but an angel topping my tree. We go with the angel.

Getting one, setting it up, and decorating it and the house is a pain, but the results are worth a little hassle. The feeling of the holidays is much more complete with the decorations up. Opening presents without a tree would just seem weird.