Real or Artificial Tree?

A live tree for Christmas is an absolute must in my house, luckily my husband feels the same way. I love the smell and I don't mind the needles at all.

Christmas is not the same without a real tree. That is just my and my hubby's opinion :) I love going out in the cold to find, or some years cut down, a tree!

We always had real trees growing up, and we only have real ones now. It wouldn't seem like Christmas without it!

Oh, we go out to the Christmas tree farm and cut one down every year! My kids help papa and I pick out a good tree, they help cut it down, they help carry it to the car. We get hot cider/hot chocolate and visit with Santa and get sugar cookies and take a bunch of pictures. We go the weekend after Thanksgiving and it stays up until I can't take it anymore (usually the first week of January! lol) and my house smells fantastic. I have never understood fake trees. We make it a whole day affair when we go get our tree.
L.

We like to cut down our own tree each year (with a Forest Service permit of course). I love it - the tree often looks a bit funny but we love the day out side snow shoeing with the kids and picking out a tree. I love the smell too. They do make some awfully nice fake trees these days though.

Always a live tree. The smell is just something that cannot be duplicated.

Real all the way! It's worth it!

Real tree for us. We go chop our own down

I grew up with artificial. My mom was always paranoid about fire when we were growing up and refused to have a real one. Call me Scrooge, but now as an adult, I feel it seems so wasteful to chop down a tree that took years to grow just to make my house smell like pine for a few weeks.

I've never had a traditional Christmas tree as an adult. Before kids, it just didn't seem necessary. After kids, we have bought real fruit trees that we decorate and then plant in our backyard after Christmas. Not sure what we're going to do this year, because we're running out of room in the backyard.

My parents still have their elaborately decorated fake tree, and we normally spend Christmas with them anyway, so I don't think my kids are missing out.

I prefer a live freshly cut tree (they last longer). Over the years we have had artificial ones. Once at work we had an artificial tree but I found a candle that smelled like evergreen and had it burning and a co-worker thought the tree was real. We all did get a laugh out of that one.

It's just that the cost of $50 to $75 a year for a tree has its limits.

I remember peeking under the curtain and smelling the pine scent in the house as a kid and oh boy there was nothing greater. Enough memory lane.

The other S.

PS My dream is to have a room or closet for a tree that once it is decorated it stays that way and you can just roll it out and plug it in. The you roll it back in the closet for storage until the next year. That's because you can never get the tree to look the same the second time around.

We always do a real one.
Even when my husband was deployed I would go and get a real tree.
3 years ago I bought a 6 ft white tree. We hang red poinsetta lights and white lights on it and have all the Marine and NAvy ornaments. THat one sits in the piano room, the real tree goes in the living room with multicolored lights.
I love Christmas trees.

I have a fake tree and a candle from Yankee Candle called "christmas wreath " for the smell.
I'm all about the smell as well. But with the fake tree, I know it's going to look good and there's no " bad side"

I'm with you, can't beat the wonderful smell of the tree permeating the house. The aroma reminds me of my grandma's house, good memories. Any years I have a tree it's always a real one. We would mulch it afterwards.

We have a potted Norfolk pine that we bring indoors and decorate for Yule.

Real thing only! Love the noble fir, they are a bit more expensive. I will only have it up two weeks before Christmas and has to come down on the 26th though!

We have a fake tree. Usually it goes up when SD and I get tired of waiting and we crawl into the attic an set it up ourselves. DH had a real tree off and on when the kids were little and I had real and fake trees off and on, too. Christmas to me is no less magical with a fake tree, but a lot less cold! The last time we went tree hunting it was in a forest the state wanted thinned and my sister got lost. :P Our fake tree might not be the most beautiful but it's ours, it has memories, and we know exactly how it will fit year to year - no turning and indoor hacksawing.

I also have a few Yankee Candles I pull out and only burn this time of year.

In the end, it's all about you and your traditions. If you can afford the tree and it's important to you and the cat won't eat it and puke out needles, then go for it. Everyone has something that is special to them.

Grew up with a real one for a looooong time until my dad had to pull a baby out of a house fire. A fire caused by a dried out Christmas tree and faulty lights. The baby survived but from THEN on we went fake.

We're having a "surprise" Chritmas next Sunday. My "Bonus Mom" will be here from Phoenix and has NO idea what I have planned. I was hoping to cut some evergreen tree branches and bring them in for the smell. She misses the midwest and can't get the same feeling living in the desert. I think that would be a good compromise.

for me, it has to be a real one. I just can't imagine using a fake one. I have to have the smell of it. It's amazing!

REAL! It is not christmas to me without a real tree. As a kid no matter how broke my parents were they always found a way to have a live tree, even if it was some sadsack charlie brown one bought christmas eve. I love, love, love the smell of a fresh pine tree.

I grew up w/ only real trees and when I had kids, we had the tradition of going out and chopping down our own...like you, it was the smell that got me! BUT, after cleaning needles for months, worrying about watering and fire hazard, we finally broke down and bought a beautiful (very real looking) artificial tree. And we just burn the pine scented candles, as one poster suggested! I love real trees, just not all the hassle!

I grew up with a mother who was a real tree FANATIC. We had two real trees--a formal flocked one in the living room and a regular one with crafty and homemade decorations in the family room. She used to drive my dad nuts putting them up too--they had to be perfect. One year she even had him return one because when she got it home the trunk was crooked. The guy at the tree lot said he'd never had someone return a tree before! After I left for college they started cutting their own trees. I missed out on that.

I continued with the real tree fanaticism for awhile. Then I had kids, colicky kids. When our colicky, non-sleeping firstborn was an infant at Christmas time we heard a crash about 5:30 a.m. The real tree had fallen over and several ornaments were broken. It was a mess. The following year we decorated a Norfolk pine in a pot. (-: The following year the colicky infant was now 2 and diagnosed with allergies. We've had fake trees ever since. I miss the smell and the experience, but not the mess. It's nice to be able to keep the tree up for awhile after Xmas without worrying about fire hazard, etc. Our fake tree goes up shortly after Thanksgiving and stays until early January (or even mid January if we have a hockey tournament or other out of town plans that interfere with taking it down). Even my parents have gone fake. )-:

I grew up having an artificial tree every year. My husband's family had real ones. I like the artificial tree, we've had the same one for 15 years. My son can help set it up and if we go on vacation during the holidays we don't have to worry. For the smell, I will sometimes buy a fresh wreath or a potted rosemary or pine that can be planted outdoors later.

Fake all the way--love it because I can put it up in about 20 minutes and its already got the lights on it, we put our special ornaments on and the star and we are done! No mess and no allergy issues---we all have asthma and the real trees make us sick-so this is as good as it gets for us.

M

I am 100% with you. A fake tree just feels fake & give me a crappy feeling about the entire holiday in general. My husband is the fake tree-onator because of the mess & the cat always wanting to climb up inside the real variety.

Growing up we had a narrow artificial tree and I hated it. It looked really fake (not like the nice ones)....some of that is because of limited space. So, as soon as I had my own place I bought a real tree. After several Christmas seaons of being very sick and finding out my asthma was allerghy induced (with my worst allergies being to trees and grasses), I reverted to an artificial tree. We have a large, very nice, pre-lit tree.

I have a fake tree... we bought a huge real looking tree on clearance for $10 a few years ago!!!! I'm too cheap to spend however much real trees cost these days, besides the fact I'm always afraid of the fire hazard, not to mention the mess too!!! :)

Growing up we had a fake tree...in fact my mom had a giant white flocked tree, which was surprisingly gorgeous, even though I know it sounds cheesy!! I loved our tree and my mom was so good at decorating it and we put on all our favorite ornaments and it was fabulous.

When we got married, the first year we didn't even have a tree, just a pointsettia, and then we've had real trees ever since. My husband grew up with real ones and just couldn't live without it. I'd never had one. I like the real tree. I like the smell, I like picking it out, and I like that it gets recycled into mulch for the park...I also like that I don't have to store it in my basement with all the other junk I need to deal with. Yes, it is a cost every year, and I can't say that I'm as in love with a real tree as my husband, but I guess the pros outweigh the cons for us!

We did real for a few years and then we switched to fake - not my choice. But it is easy now and it works. We will go back to real in a few years though. I think this year I need to get the Christmas tree smelling candle!

Artificial. The one year my parents had a real tree I was living overseas. They woke up on Christmas morning to find the tree alive with ants.

Last year we had two trees. The main one, and a completely decorated with lights, ornaments, star and tree skirt tree upside down attached to to ceiling. My husband likes to surprise me with his decorating. I call him Sparky.

I love the smell of pine, so we always have a real one. When i was pregnant with my 1st daughter, I could'nt stand the smell of it, so we got an artificial one. We still have it, so if I get pregnant again and during Christmas time, then we will use it. Or if we have a depression, we can use that. lol

We had a real tree when I was a kid, but my parents switched to artificial because of my mom's allergies (and I can imagine my dad was thrilled to not worry about the mess, etc), and it was a bummer but I understood. I think real trees are the best. Yes, it's more of a hassle and it's more expensive than an artificial, but since my husband and I have been married, we have purchased a real tree every Christmas. When my daughter was born, we began going out to the tree farms and "hunting" for our family tree. It has become one of our own little family traditions that I look forward to every year, and I hope to build special memories of "tree hunting" and decorating the tree for my kids! And yes, now back to October - first we have to "hunt" pumpkins :)

We get a real tree every year.
We've shredded/mulched it up or used it for firewood when the holidays are over.
Turns out artificial trees in land fills are not as environmentally friendly as people first thought they would be.

we always do a fake tree. but i set my tree up the first weekend of november and take it down shortly after christmas. but i sell scentsy and we have a scent for our warmers called festival of trees. that should help give the pine smell into the house....look into the scentsy items!!!!

I grew up with live trees.
As an adult, I LOVE my 3-foot artificial tree. It's easy. It's quick. It's simple. It's small. There's no maintenance. No watering. No needles. No added cost. No worry of our child knocking it over or spilling water or getting in fallen needles.

I prefer the artificial one. If I needed the smell, I'd get a candle.

fake,,,,,,,,ive had the same one in my family for years, its actually older than me.

Artificial. I know the trees are specifically grown to be cut down but I still can't bring myself to do it. I get a pine scented Yankee candle. Smells authentic.

Real tree. My husband likes fake. We haven't gotten any tree in a few years because I have no place to put it. My house is made wrong.

We have done both and last year we had no tree at all. We didn't have room in the house for a tree so we didn't do the tree thing. This year I really would like a live tree but have to see how the money rolls. If I can't get a real tree I will opt for some real reef or some kind of live pine decor. I actually would like to have a table top tree.

My true preferance is a live treee. They smell great and look amazing with the lights, ornaments, and trimmings. We do strands of popcorn with hand painted wooden ornaments.

When I was a kid we used to get real trees, until we realized I was allergic to them. We now have artificial trees out of necessity. I like them much better for the obvious reason of no allergies but also they are so much cleaner and you don't have to keep remembering to water it etc.

We do BOTH! My "big tree" is a lovely 7' artificial tree, a big American monstrosity and spectacle that I dearly love, complete with the rotating thing so that the tree turns slowly so you can see all it's awesomeness. The ornaments actually mean a lot to us, each one has a meaning or story for us. We have the multi-color lights (because to me, that says "kids" more than all white, and Christmas to me is a "kids" holiday), etc. I prefer the fake tree for the main tree because well, it's big, we love it and love seeing it year after year, it's the perfect shape, we don't have to worry about the cat messing with it as much or watering it or the thought in the back of your mind that it could dry out and become a fire hazard, or oh we have to dispose of this later, etc.
In the kitchen, I have a real tree, I can think of the name of it though....it's a little piney looking thing, but not really Christmas tree shape. It's sweet though, and smells nice. We keep it year round in the kitchen, and decorate it for whatever holiday is happening at the time. For Christmas, it's a Cajun Christmas theme.
Growing up at my parent's house, they actually had THREE trees. In the family room, the old artificial tree that we loved so much (I think it was older than me!) which was the kids' tree (and where Santa left gifts), decorated in multi-colored lights, real strings of popcorn and spiced gum drops that we'd string up while watching It's a Wonderful Life, and all the kid ornaments and stuff we made in scouts or whatever, and a big poofy quilted skirt that mom made. A nicer pretty live tree, flocked, in mom's formal living room with all white lights and only Mikasa crystal ornaments and a fancy red velvety skirt (very pretty but boring....and we couldn't touch it). And in the kitchen, a live tree just like the one we keep in my kitchen now, for all holidays.
As for the scents: our house smells "holiday-ish", but that would be cinnamon pinecones, homemade potpourri that we do together as a family, and lots of cooking and baking, lots of spiced drinks in the crockpot, that kind of thing. Grand smells!

We had fake most of my childhood, and I just never knew any better. As a single person, I had a small fake tree, because it was all I could manage on my own (no way could I drag a live one into an upstairs apartment and get it in a stand). But since marriage, we have had a live tree every year except for our 2nd. The 2nd year, we had JUST moved into our first home (that September) and I was pregnant and completely miserable/nauseous, and my husband had to put up the tree. He did it for me, as he wasn't really that "into" it. My little fake tree that I'd had as a single person was 5 feet tall, and in our family room that was 13 feet tall it was embarrassingly small. We haven't used fake since. Now our kids get a thrill just going and looking at trees and would NOT think it was really Christmas with a fake one.
Every year I cuss and get angry trying to get the lights on it (but if I weren't such a perfectionist and didn't wrap the branches from trunk to stem it wouldn't be a big deal). My tree last year was only 8 feet tall, but I had about 1100 lights on it. It was gorgeous! It always comes out that way. With a fake tree, they just never seem quite right to me.
And the smell. Yes, the smell. Love it.
My favorite tree for Xmas trees is the frasier fir. We live in the south and they are pricey down here. If I could get away with spending only $40 I'd be THRILLED. Usually it costs us more like $60 or $70 for a decent tree (8-9 feet, fresh, and pretty without big gaps in one side). Last year I lucked up and found one for about $50. We were SO happy. :)