I've experienced both of these to some degree or another and
feel uniquely qualified to share. So I've never actually had a live tree of my
own, my family has been synthetic my whole life. But I've been to several
houses, and a couple parties including one last night with a real tree.
I'm gonna start with synthetic trees because that's what I
know best. Call them what you want, fake, plastic, or whatever and that might
be true. Who says that has to be necessarily bad. I mean when you think about
it one of these trees could last a dozen plus years or even up to a life time.
So there's only one payment required, you don't have to spend money each year
and you don't need to take time to pick out a tree each year. Then there's the
fire risk, though when it comes to Christmas fires it is more likely that the
fire will start from the electrical outlet than the tree itself, because even
if the tree is considered flame retardant wood is more flammable than plastic.
Then there is the issue of the mess. With any tree real or synthetic there will
be some sort of mess, because the needles still fall off no matter what. Whereas
the real trees you've got needles falling off all the time, not just the casual
few either. Then at the end you've got a dead tree to deal with rather than a
tree to just put back in its' box until next year.
Now on to real trees. And that's easily the best and
simplest way to describe them. They fill your house with the real smell of
evergreen tree in your house and that is something that can't be synthetically
replicated by any means and it blends greatly with the other traditional scents
of Christmas time. Also real trees not only look fuller but are so much fuller
and shapely, giving them a very much more natural shape that synthetics haven't
quite captured. From what I've heard picking out a tree as a family can be a
very enjoyable Christmas tradition. Then when Christmas is over, rather than
throwing out the tree if you've got a fireplace or fire pit, after all the
needles have fallen off you've got the great beginnings of a fire.
They both have their pros and cons, I'm not here to make any
sort of judgments on what kind of tree you should get or try and say one kind
of tree is better than another. But there is one judgment I will make: if your
tree isn't green, it's weird. The white trees, aluminum trees, or any other
unnaturally coloured trees are just strange. I just feel like it's not right.
It's just one of these things that I just don't understand. And I don't know
why people do it.
Post Script: Where are you in this debate? I'd like to go
for a real tree one day, I think it
would be nice to have my house smell as Christmas-ey as possible.
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