apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

We're buying a real menorah. :-)

I have a small artificial tree for my own apartment, but at my parents house we have a nice tradition.
In the family room we have our real tree with all the handmade and figure ornaments. In the living room, which is slightly more formal in nature, we put up an artificial tree with all the nice ball ornaments on it.

I don't think I'll be able to give up the real tree tradition when I have a home and family of my own. I'm just too attached! Plus, going to the tree farm and tagging a tree in October and cutting it down in December is a staple in my Christmas festivities!!

We bought a small live tree in a pot to sit on a table. We didn't trust the puppy.

I grew up on an oldfashioned green plastic Christmas tree circa 1979. My mom would dig it out of a huge box and spend the entire day setting it up. First you would put the feet on the big pole that went up the middle, then place each branch into the pole. Ah, sweet memories of watching that baby get erected year after year.

My mom hated the idea of needles falling over her carpet and we never knew a real tree. I used be confused about why my friends that had real trees (i.e., who would you want a tree that is asymmetrical or doesn't have perfect branches).

So I guess it's no surprise I've grown up to become someone who buys a real tree.

I am decidedly pro-live tree - it actually seems less wasteful to me, when you consider that fake trees are made in factories and shipped vast distances, not to mention that you can't recycle them when they get old and raggedy. Also, while the live trees are growing, they're adding a positive impact to the environment (though I suppose there is some pesticide use...).

We've bought our trees from the same local tree farmers every year, and I like that we support a family business. Our co-op also gathers the disposed live trees for mulch, which is great.

I made a real menorah (props to Lisa) and I have a small rosemary bush a table with small silver balls on it as a "holiday" tree. It smells fabulous and I can plant it in 2009.

I grew up having live xmas trees, and though my boyfriend fought it tooth-and-nail, I'm continuing the tradition. Nothing tops the aroma of a fraser fir coupled with the sight of tacky multicolored lights and tinsel.

I downplay my guilt by figuring that since the trees have already been chopped down, I may as well buy one rather than letting it go to waste (this is similar to how I justify buying steak...).

SSSCAT might be a great idea for the person earlier who was having cat problems with the couch. Same problem, basically.

An understated tinsel tree that I've been using for 5 years (which I dont think of as wasteful at all) Doesn't involve water, land use, or leave me with a giant thing that I have to leave on the curb in a big plastic bag.

We've got a fake tree. I'm allergic to most Christmas trees, so this season is all about antihistamines and going everywhere with an epi-pen.

I'm not too worried about the ecological impacts of my tree: they tend to last many decades with proper storage. So compare the embodied energy, water, and so forth in my one tree with forty farmed trees, and the plastic one comes out looking pretty good.

This year we are buying several large rosemary bushes and decorating them with small lights and a few ornaments; that way we get a bit of green, but in a way that's more sustainable (and delicious!).

Love the real tree...can't beat the smell and it's lively branches. Plastic isn't the same. I have the same theory about fake flowers...has to be real or no deal!

I am rather fond of my fake trees particularly my vintage aluminum tinsel tree. IMO, there is no 'natural' substitute for an aluminum tree - they are in a class of their own.

I'm with you, ayse.

I have an amazing artificial tree that looks like the real deal and has already paid for itself in 2 years vs. the cost of a real tree.

This is the second artificial tree I have had in 14 years. I would have kept my other but was it was too tall for my new home ,so I donated it to the local senior citizen center.

I have a fresh wreath in my living room so the fresh smell of pine wafts through the air w/o a mess of needles.

What Joy R. said.

We bought a wii with our xmas tree money (and then some). I think we'll get more use out of it.

Stayed small this year, and bought a tree-shaped rosemary plant. One 10-ft string of white lights, a package of jinglebells (tied individually with red twine) and a few ornaments are just right for us. Fake trees are odd to me. Seems lazy, too. The falling needles are part of the charm!

I vote for real trees. The fake ones seem kind of pointless, like fake flowers, but hey, it's your house.

It took a few years of living by myself before I figured out that I didn't actually need other people around to have a tree. And I could decorate it any way I damn well pleased. In fact, I could even not decorate it--just set it up and enjoy the aroma. I usually go for those "table-top" sizes--much easier to handle.

That said, mischief7's idea seems terrific.

I celebrate xmas in Douglas county, home of the Douglas Fir. I think I'll suggest a fake tree to the family this year just to see the look on their faces :)

I've decided to go with artificial tree this year. I've bought Antique Christmas Tree from this christmass tree alternatives. I'm pretty happy with that yet.

Have had an artificial tree for as long as I can remember for xmas and now living with my boyfriend, we have two little fake ones. Maybe one day I'll buy a real potted one, then I can plant it in the yard!

No decorations or tree going on here at all, real, artificial or artsy substitute.

Hell yeah I will! What is an alternative tree anyway?

ABSOLUTELY. I know it may not be the greenest decision (...well...), but it isn't Christmas without the scent of radiata pine throughout the house. I could live off that smell! Every year when we get it (around the 19th-21st - we live in Australia, if we got one on the 1st, it'd be wilted by Christmas!), everyone just flocks around it and breathes in the scent. It's glorious.

had real trees for many years and as often as possible, dropped them off for mulching. But still, it takes a car ride to get a tree; it takes a car ride to drop off a tree.

Now have an artificial tree that I anticipate will last as long, if not longer, than the one I grew up with (Which lasted twenty or so years before my parents freecycled it, which means it's still out there somewhere...). That's 20 less trees to mulch, and yes, it's something that was made in what is probably a dirty, nasty, factory, but it's something that will last for years - it's also 40 less car rides, and at least 300 less runs with the vaccuum cleaner....and more to the point, at least 200 less tissue boxes - Christmas trees make me sneeze!

My point is that we can tally the environmental positives and negatives until we're blue in the face. Neither option is carbon neutral. And as long as we're all sitting here reading and writing using computers and so on, we have to admit to ourselves that we're not nearly as environmentally conscious as we claim to be (myself included)

I got a great artificial tree two years ago on sale at Frontgate and everyone thinks it is real.

I can't live without the "real" smell, so I buy a real wreath for my front door and one for inside the house and decorate them with my holiday swag; then I get the best of both worlds.

I have three artificial trees set up in my house (ranging from 1' high to 5' high). A tiny green tree on my dining room table, a white 3' chicken feather tree with a white/silver theme, and the 5' high in a ceramic urn.

Christmas tree farms are a small but important part of the economy where I live. We usually walk over to the lot sponsored by a local service club and carry the tree home. At the end of Christmas, we either drag the tree a couple of blocks to the neighbourhood middle school, which is one of nine or ten drop-off points in the city, or we make a donation to a local Scout troop in return for having them pick the tree up from the curb. Either way, the tree is chipped and used for mulch on the flower beds the city maintains.

I would never own a real tree.

i grew up w/ live trees and love the smell..
we always went to the tree farm to ride wagon and cut it down ourselves :)
this year will be a fake tree as the kitty loves to drink the water and the tree dries out too soon.
i love the idea of a live wreath to have the smell.

on the note the fake trees last for 20 years.. that tree will be looking mighty pretty by then i imagine.

I'm really quite surprised that so many AT readers openly admit to buying cut trees.

Another option for you murd...er...traditionalists is to buy LIVE trees that can be planted after the festivities are over.

AT told me about the Living Christmas Tree co here in LA. We're renting a real tree from them. It's beautiful and we're thrilled to have the best of both worlds -- a wonderfully aromatic real tree that will live way beyond this holiday season!

I wouldn't say it's a tradition that I would never break, but I do have a real one. It's only about 4' tall, as opposed to last year's 7' tall one, and it cost only $30 instead of over $100 like last year's did.

wc_canuck I like your style. I love the smell of real trees but I like the tastless-ness of the artificial ones.

I ponder the unfulfillment of a tree that was born to pretend to have grown magically in my living room and go get one today. It has already been cut so I will save it from crying and dying without meeting its true destiny.

We usually buy a real tree from a local family-owned farm, or buy one from a local charity. And yes, I do openly admit it! Renting a live tree is an idea which I could certainly support over buying a formerly live / cut tree. Anyone have recommendations for the Boston area?

I would've preferred a real tree, because the last time we had a fake tree one of my cats completely destroyed it (so it would be less wasteful to have a real tree destroyed)... But we tried a fake tree again this year, and the cat is once again attempting to destroy it. So it's looking like I'll have a real tree next year.

I was a hardcore real tree person until I developed such bad allergies that I was miserable in my own home the entire Christmas season! Add to that the obsessive vaccuuming to try and control the needles and a cat that liked to drink the water and I went artificial a few years ago and haven't looked back. Extra bonus: It's pre-lit, so no more wrapping lights around and around the tree!

I grew up in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and we went and cut a real tree every year (very Norman Rockwell). I then moved to the city and paid for a tree from a tree lot one year. I was shocked at the crazy pricing of trees and spent the entire next year trying to get pine needles out of the trunk of my car. The next year I purchased a fake tree and have been using it ever since.

I buy a live tree every year from a charity organization down the street. I didn't know I supposed to be ashamed of it!

I mean a real (cut) tree, not a live one.

It's not like live trees are the spoils of war carried home by marauding bands of Earth-hating eco-pirates. No, Nicole, cutting Christmas trees down does not make anyone a murderer.

Just ask the birds and other wildlife that get their very own nature preserve maintained amidst the sprawling tract home developments and crappy strip malls. This is about Christmas trees. Nobody's saving the world here either way.

*shakes head at knee-jerk puritanical urban eco warriors*

..."Nothing tops the aroma of a fraser fir coupled with the sight of tacky multicolored lights and tinsel.".... Hahahahah

our family gets into an fight every year over real or fake. so we get both. one for the reading room, and one for the sitting room...

i didn't get real xmas trees until i found out i could get them from the campus forestry club. they go up into the sierra nevada and harvest understory trees to help reduce fuel loads. plus they are grown without intensive management and pesticides. i feel fine about it since it was going to get cut down anyway.

We venture out to the country to cut down our own tree. I know it sounds hideous, but really it's not.

It's grown locally and expressly for the Holidays (meaning that new trees will be grown in its place.)It doesn't need to be shipped from a long distance and when it does finally die we donate it to be used for mulch.

Plus it smells nice.