Christmas Tree- real or fake?

Always purchased real one and kept outdoors until two days before Christmas Eve when brought indoors and decorated on Christmas Eve. 3 years ago just could not afford the cost of a real one, double the previous year so invested in a JL one. Glad I did, no mess and easy to erect and put away. Don't even miss the smell now.

We no have 2 fake trees - one in the lounge and one in the kitchen /diner.
We always used to have real trees when we were growing up until the tinselly ones became available and my mother confessed she was sick of vacuuming up the needles!
When my son was little, the tinsel tree needed replacing and I can remember racing between garden centres the day before Christmas Eve to find a real tree and ending up with a blue spruce that was in a pot and only 2 feet tall!
This year will be the first with our new cat who not only loves to climb but is quite likely to knock every ornament off the tree!

(maybe I should have said I miss the smell of a real tree, not the smell of the husband!!!)

I used to offset the price of a real tree against a really good flower arrangement. £40 for a tree that is the centre of attention for 3 - 4 weeks (longer than flowers would last in a December heated room) and a real tree would be seen to be a bargain.

But when my husband left 10 years ago I bought a fake tree and I no longer suffer the guilt of cutting it to bits in January ... Fakes can be quite realistic now, but I do so miss the smell.

No tree for me this year as I've sold my house and am short term renting, so it may be I'll be buying some beautiful flowers after all.

I bought a small one in a pot two years ago and had two Christmases with it, but sadly this year while planted in the garden it lost a lot of its needles. So, I've bitten the bullet and bought an expensive one from John Lewis which I intend to see me down. And as someone has said earlier, if you use a fake tree for over ten years, its carbon footprint is pretty good.

We never had a real tree as kids and I have carried on the fake tradition.

We're renting a tree this year, too. Delivery expected next week but we'll keep it in the garden until the 18th or so. We've chosen a 5ft one for our rather small living room.

Cost is £60 net of deposit; a bit pricey but hopefully rather better for the environment than the other options. I have thought about crocheting a full size tree but that is a project which will definitely need to wait for retirement.

fake indoors for many years now because of pine needles and bare feet/dog's paws. Real outside though.

Did you stand around it, wearing Christmas jumpers, singing carols, with a measly little fire flickering in the background?

???? I've just realised that sounds like a good Christmas story.....
Little Nell rummaging through the cast off trees, whilst the blizzard blew around her. Then along came the kindly grocer......

When my husband and I first moved in together our Christmad tree was one from the local green grocer, who threw it out as it was so ugly.
It was in the gutter. All muddy and bare of spines(?). We asked and he let us take it home. We were broke, and were given some lights that only worked if we cut out the wire that had the broken ones on. Thin silver tinsle. But it was the best tree we ever had.

One of each

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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!!

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

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.

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.

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.