Ask Lemmy

I've always had a fake one as a kid and continue with them on my own. My spouse always had real ones, but the care and cleanup of a real tree is obnoxious. Gotta keep it watered, gotta keep the needles contained, gotta wrap it in the thinnest fucking bag at the end, gotta vacuum the needles you missed, gotta vacuum the needles that spilled form the bag rips, gotta put it on the curb a certain day. So we do fake. Started with a curb find with dead lights where we just threw more lights on top

My family has always done artificial. We don't have the tree we had when In was a child, which was a big tree that took up a good portion of the living room. We had a lot of light strings and a lot of ornaments. The base had a thing that allowed it to slowly spin and it was amazing, after it was up and decorated.

Now we have a small artificial tree that is a lot newer and not anywhere near as impressive and maybe a quarter or less of the size. It's still good because it brings out some holiday spirit.

Bucket tree, tree in a bucket. Have the tree in your house in a bucket, bucket is in the house with the tree in a bucket. Move bucket inside with the tree in the bucket, or outside once you're done with bucket tree.

Of course only the real thing counts. It's a superstition after all, isn't it?

Real tree

I don't really want to do a tree to begin with but if my wife's gonna make me do it I'm going to do it right.

Also I don't have to wrestle the damn thing up and down the rickety ladder to my attic, it's bad enough that I have to do that with the bins of ornaments.

And I get the catharsis of getting to burn the damn thing after the season is over.

Also it gives my house a slight piney scent.

Artificial, bought a friend's tree second hand 8 years ago.

Thinking about replacing it next year. Have a toddler, and trying to make Christmas more special, and this one's old enough it's lots a lot of it's needles

We buy a live tree, but a small one.

It can get pricey.

I like the idea of having a real tree, to have that nice pine scent in the room and how it flourishes with the decor. But I've been leaning towards getting artificial ones.

Real Christmas tree, fresh from a farm about 2km from here.

Neither of them

We’ve been living in small apartments. We got one of the pencil trees from Balsam Hill around 2009-2010 and still use it. Works way better in tight corners than a natural tree.

Big artificial one, and one tiny "sad" real tree.

This stems from three years ago when we had to say goodbye to our 12 year old dog that we had since he was a puppy. We had zero desire to put up our artificial tree, but we wanted something so we grabbed the last 3" tree from whole foods that had fallen behind the display. We only put on one Star Trek DS9 Worf ornament and a small strand of lights.

Over the years it's become our Star Trek tree, but we still try to find the saddest tree of the lot.

My family buys real once. I dont buy any

I grew up with real ones but became lazy. Plus I lived for a long time in a 22m2 studio and no real tree would fit so we bought a skinny artifical one. A realistic one with some asymmetric branches and high quality stiff needles.

Still going strong after 10+ years and moving twice, will probably last another decade.

We swap back-and-forth between real and fake. Some of it depends upon time to be able to go out and get one, because we go and chop ours down When we get a real one. It also depends on the weather if it gets really cold sometimes will just put up the fake one. But yeah, we do prefer a real one.

My family bought a miniature real one two years ago so we'll probably keep using it. It's a bit of a hassle to water and take care of throughout the year, but I like it, the water is probably still cheaper than buying a whole new tree, real or artificial. It looks cute and is (obviously) easy to decorate.

I'd be fine with a fake one, but my wife prefers real ones, so that's what we do.

No

Real. I can't stand fake things, especially fake nature. Wood veneers, marble painted plaster laminates, LVT, no no no. I'd sooner have no tree at all.

Artificial. Real trees are a colossal pain in the ass.

We get a real one from our neighbor, he does yardwork & sod most of the year but at Christmas he gets some trees to sell from some guy he knows in N Carolina and they are always amazing all of them. Yes it costs a lot, we have a large family who come for Christmas and it's nice, I categorize the expense as entertaining.

When I was poor, I would just make a "tree" each year out of something. One year the coat rack, one year on the wall in construction paper, one year I found a inflatable one like a beach ball, one year my ex cut the top off a bush & hedged it into a cone - that went on for almost 20 years, always something different. My kids didn't mind at all, nobody ever said "you need a tree" only "cool". You don't need a tree. Don't feel obligated at all.

At work I have a wee artificial one.

I've had artificial pretty much my whole life.

The last two were both hand me down trees, and in turn I handed down the tree I had.

Many years ago, we decided we did not want to cut trees anymore for the purpose of decorating our place, and since we also did not want to use a plastic one I did what I had to do by... painting a small one on top recycled cardboard that I cut to shape.

It's really small (the fat red-bearded dude doesn't overwhelm us under gifts either, maybe it's because he hates our tree?). It looks like a kid's version of a Xmas tree, some people would call it ugly as fuck, I say it is unique. We can easily (dis)assemble it & store it (takes no space at all), it never shed, we never lose or break a decoration, and setting it up with all it's decorations is just a matter of sliding one piece of cardboard into another, for its trunk/foot ;)

Despite it being made out of cardboard and being painted with gouache it's sturdy, only needing a touch of fresh paint every now and then. The previous one lasted something like 11 years before I had to make a new one, this year.

Used to throw a Christmas tree festival. We have artificials we got from that.