Christmas Tree- real or fake?

I used to have a real tree and although I love the smell it makes s me sneeze all the time so its a fake on for us.

Lovely tree Tilly
Your twigs are so pretty Coastal . I might do a similar ‘tree’

Please show all your trees/decs - I love to see everyone’s festive decorations. ?

Christmas tree discussions always put me in mind of our dear Phoenix. She had many a humorous tale to tell.

Coastpath

I have a little fake tree in my kitchen. It's ancient and barely looks like a tree - more like tinsel stuck on a coat hanger. For my main 'tree' I always do something like this with twigs which I gather in the woods and burn on a bonfire in the garden afterwards.

What a lovely idea! I might copy you x

? my first bit of Christmas effort - just picked from the garden.

Mind you it won’t last until Christmas I suppose, have to pick more.

I'm posting this all over the place as I love it.

We have an occasional gardener who makes Christmas wreaths and sells them. Ours is too big for the frontdoor so it is on the wall in the porch.

I always fancy making my own wreath from stuff in the garden, but never get around to it.

That is a lovely wreath though kitty

Lots of that stuff is from her garden and from other gardens she looks after.

I'd love to have that sort of flair and make my own. Sadly, I haven't.

Always real, but smaller than the whoppers dh used to go and choose with dds when they were still at home - he’d have to saw quite a bit off the bottom and we’d have to shift the sitting room furniture around to make space.

Since Gdcs were staying this weekend just gone, I put the usual little potted one outside the front door a bit early. With luck we’ll keep it in the garden for 2-3 years. No space to plant it alas.

Wow! I never realised that a tree can be rented! That’s a great idea. I much prefer real christmas trees but DH has a bad back and it was such a carryon for me to do it by myself. 4 years ago I bought a small artificial one and it will last us a lifetime. Another one bought in the sales at JL and I love it. No more mess and I can put it up when I am ready. Which might be this weekend.

Whitewavemark2

I always fancy making my own wreath from stuff in the garden, but never get around to it.

That is a lovely wreath though kitty

Me neither, but I’ve still got 2 of the wreath ‘bases’ kept from bought ones, in case I ever feel my non-artistic skills are up to it! Should take them to a charity shop really.

What I do always do, though, is stick a load of assorted greenery from the garden into a block of Oasis in a copper bowl*. Despite no artistic bone in my body it always looks v nice as long as I cram enough in, with a red or white candle somewhere.
*After it’s been given its annual polish! Which I have yet to do - must check stock of Brasso wadding.

This is last year’s, possibly our last real one. For the past 20+ years we have gone to the same Christmas tree farm and chosen our tree, having it cut fresh. But we’ve bought artificial this year - and my best friend said “You won’t like it!”

That's a good idea. I have a copper basket that even I could maybe make nice - possibly.

Tomato sauce is quite good for cleaning copper.

Real trees are best but I can't cope, so I have a pretty little fake one now. I've just started putting decorations up.

The first Christmas tree we had after we were married was the most appallingly ‘fake’ fake imaginable - we were living in Oman and at the time there were virtually no western style shops and nothing Christmassy to buy - until someone told me a new ‘proper’ shop had just opened!
So off I went with her in my little car to try to find it - down a few dirt tracks, and oh, joy, there it was - and they had a little Christmas tree in a box, with a set of lights and a few baubles!

It was only about 3 feet tall and the ‘branches’ were just stick things you bent out, with green and white tinsel ‘needles’, but I was so overjoyed to get any sort of tree - IIRC we were the only house on our construction camp to have one at all, so all the children were invited in to admire it.
I still regret chucking it many years later, after we’d been long back in the U.K. - when we were clearing out the loft.

Georgesgran

I don’t want to derail the thread - but one year when DD2 was in hospital, we left getting a real tree a bit late and all we could get was an enormous one, which DH said he’d trim to fit.
You might think that would mean sawing the bottom off??
Of course not - DH sawed the top off, so we had a round tree that year! Still have the photograph I took.

Thanks for that, made me laugh.
I wonder how many of the New Year divorce petitions come about because of a falling out about Christmas decorations?
Love to see the photo of it

Jane71

We usualy have a real one, bringing it in from the garden each Christmas, and hope its hasn't grown too much! This year it looks to be near 6 ft, so we may have to leave it in the ground and buy another small one.

So you actually dig it up each year? And I though my collecting shrubbery cuttings and climbing into the loft (not me) for decs. was difficult enough!!

For many years when I was a child, with usually pretty skint parents, we had a small real tree that was dug up from the garden every year - originally it was very small indeed.

However it really didn’t like being dug up, and it showed! I still remember the boy next door (who I had a crush on at about 13) saying, ‘Has your Christmas tree had a heart attack?’

Eventually the poor thing was pensioned off and allowed to grow up properly in the garden.

I have the smallest, fakest tree, with all the old tat and lights already on it.
It sits on a table, needs no sorting out, and doesn't disrupt my living room.

Every house we have lived in we bought a real tree for our first Christmas there, then planted it in the garden afterwards. The last time we moved the tree had grown from 3 feet to 44 feet and our house was known in the neighbourhood as 'the one with the huge Christmas tree in the front garden'! We dressed it with lights every year, even hired a cherry picker on one occasion to get to the top, people used to stroll down our road just to look at the tree! But when a neighbours son kept cutting the wiring we gave up lighting it.

When we moved here we bought a 4 foot tree which is now 12 feet tall in the garden.

Indoors we have a 10 foot fake tree bought from JL in a sale (but still horribly expensive - I didn't tell DH). Just three sections to slot together. It's very realistic but I wish it was prelit, putting three sets of lights on it is a nightmare.

I am investigating being 'green' and the carbon footprint of a real tree is far less than artificial. We always had big 9 foot real trees in our family home, but I'm now in a bungalow with far lower ceilings, and far less space.

Very pretty Christmas tree pictures, and the wreath is amazing kittyl.

Always a real one. I need that Christmas tree smell.

For several years, until it grew too big, we used one that actually grew from a packet of Christmas tree seeds we put in DS’s stocking 30 years ago (we’d assumed it was just a joke!). We had to get rid of it last year, sadly - we’d moved it from the garden to DH’s allotment and it was so big it was affecting other people’s plots. I used the top of it as our 2020 tree. I kept half expecting a squirrel to leap out of it as on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

We’ve always been the sort of family to have a tree way too big for our front room, and have spent many happy hours squeezing past them and stumbling into them. Unless there’s a toddler DGS in the family, as there is this year, and it has to go on a table out of harm’s way. We’ll still get the biggest one possible though.

Until last year we’ve always had a real tree, with all the accompanying hassle and disruption in our small sitting room. Last year we bought a really nice artificial one, quite small so no disruption. We’re really pleased with it and I’m so happy that DH doesn’t have to do battle with a real one anymore. Looking at the price of trees I think we’re in profit already.

Years ago we used to buy real trees from a travellers site on the side of the road. I never thought to ask them where they came from ,perhaps I didn't want to know as they were cheap ! They were friendly,sawed off the bottom and made sure it fitted into the stand that I took with me. Then helped ram it into the car.
One year it rammed too much in my little Peugeot 106 and I realised that I couldn't change gear,too much Christmas tree everywhere. So trundle home in 2nd gear.
Following year bought a lovely prelit tree in the sales and has adorned the living room for years.