What’s your preference? A real tree or a fake one to stick in your living room and adorn with Christmas lights and gewgaws? Over at Bargain Babe, the conversation is under way: she lists the pro’s and cons of each (fake ones are cheaper over the long run but shed pollutants—maybe even lead—and are expensive upfront; real ones are cheap as a one-time cost but cost more over time, and besides, they suck up fuel), and then leaves it to readers to consider.
Reminds me of my misbegotten childhood. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, of course, we had no access to any kind of tree, unless you count the occasional date palm as a “tree.” Everyone had fake trees, purchased at the commissary.
When I was small, my mother had a weird white thing made of…what? some sort of early plastic? Nylon? I believe it came with its own built-in colored Christmas lights. It was about two feet high. She would put it on a table, drape the table and base of the…uhm, “tree” with white flocking to suggest “snow,” and that was that. Far more interesting to a little kid was the tableau she built by arranging some of the flocking around a small metal mirror set on a table and then placing a couple of plastic reindeer atop the mirror. This was meant to evoke wild game standing on a frozen pond.
All very fascinating to a child who never saw snow until she was almost 18 years old.
Not too long after my first exposure to snow, I got my first exposure to marriage. My husband insisted on bringing a real pine tree into the house and setting it up in the front window.
This custom has always mystified me. What is it about killing a living thing and then watching it wither for two weeks that appeals?
Oh well.
For some years, we had these trees. The house we’d moved into had thick, luxuriant shag carpeting. Know what dead pine trees do? They drop their needles. The needles—scores of them!—would work their way into the warp and woof of that fancy shag carpet.
As it develops, there’s a reason pine needles are called needles. I would walk around my house barefoot. For months after Christmas, whenever I’d walk into the living room, I’d get a jab on the bottom of the foot! No amount of vacuuming could get all those damn needles out of the carpeting.
Mercifully, the price of Christmas trees outpaced the double-digit inflation of the 1970s. One year my husband allowed as how the tree business was getting a bit out of hand.
That was when we got the Christmas jade plant.
As was the fashion in that decade, I had put a jade plant on a stand in front of the south-facing two-story-high window that graced our living room. The jade plant shivered with joy and soon grew to be something of a jade sequoia: large and green and muscular.
Come Christmastime, I started decorating the thing with ornaments and aluminum icicles.
It worked. For several years we were free of Christmas trees, thanks to the Christmas jade plant.
Eventually, though, the jade plant got a fungus and croaked. By then my husband was making an income that was large and green and muscular. The Christmas tree discussion returned.
Don’t remember how, but I managed to convince him that we preferred a living tree. I must have threatened to sue his a$$ if I ever got another pine needle in my foot. At any rate, however it came about, after the demise of the jade plant we took to buying small potted pine trees at Home Depot. These would survive for two or three years in a good-sized pot. Once Christmas was over, we’d tote the living Christmas tree outdoors, water it well, and there it would reside for a year. The following winter it would be hauled back inside, tormented for two or three weeks, and then dragged back outdoors.
Well. You know, a tree is its own little habitat. Certain creatures like to live in trees. Some of these creatures like to lay their eggs in trees. One such creature is the black widow, Arizona’s finest earwig-, mosquito-, and cockroach-eating machine. This worthy arachnid is nice to have around the house. The outside of the house. It’s not something you want indoors, because it can deliver quite the nasty bite.
One year while the living Christmas tree was enjoying the out of doors, one of the ladies deposited a clutch of eggs in its boughs. When we brought it inside, the warmth of the heating system caused the babes to hatch.
Do you know what happens when a clutch of infant black widows gets into the air-conditioning ducts of a 3,300-square-foot house? No? That’s good. It’s best not to know.
The following Christmas we acquired a very convincing green phony Christmas tree. A fakenbaum, as it were. It was so believable that the only way you could be sure it wasn’t real was by the absence of pine pitch aroma. That, and by walking across the carpet barefooted.
The fakenbaum lasted for many years. I rather liked it. It didn’t hurt my feet. Setting it up inside the house didn’t entail killing anything. And the only thing that wanted to live in it was a vintage plastic troll.
Images:
Alarming purple fake Christmas tree: Santa’sOwn.com, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
American Christmas Tree. Iknowthegoods at en.wikipedia. GNU Free Documentation License.
Jade plant: Crassula ovata presented as an indoor bonsai, Emmanuelm (talk), Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Credible fake Christmas tree, Mfisherkirshner, Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
Woah, you grew up in Saudi?
We moved to NZ when I was 8 but it wasn’t til I was about 20 that I went snowboarding and saw snow for the first time.
We never celebrated Christmas, really, but I recall my neighbours/godparents having a small plastic tree. Christmas really is not a big thing for me – we didn’t do presents that I recall, and one year when my aunty was away and hence didn’t host a dinner at hers, mum took me and my brother out for a ride around the city on the free buses (they’re free on Christmas day, although I think that’s changed now.
We use “fake” or just “f” as a prefix too: Fake-enstocks, for instance.
I prefer a fake tree. You can get a great deal on one for next year if you wait for the Target 90% off sale after Christmas. I remember one year we had one of those silver jobs with the rotating disk of green, red, amber and blue. Not sure what happened to it after that year, but we only had it one year. I don’t remember how old I was when I saw snow the first time… maybe 16?
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Very interesting experiences you have had with trees. Almost sounds like a movie plot. Personally I grew up in Christmas tree country and would have nothing else until I went to Hawaii and saw tree shapes arrangements made out of poinsettias. They were lovely. Since then I have learned that personal expression and variety is the best option. It’s fun to see what others come up with every year in the way of decorations. With your experiences I can see why you would ban the real trees. Black widows are not a nice Christmas present.
My parents (when they were still married) had an unusual tree custom: we would have a live tree, but it had a root ball on it. After the holidays were over, Dad would plant the tree outside in the yard, and we’d eventually have our own Christmas forest outside. Yes, we still brought trees in, and planted them, but after the divorce, trees were cut from a hillside and NOT planted.
Every single one of those outside trees got decorated too, until they grew too tall to reach. Then Mom sold the house and we moved away…
My parents also had traditions with flowers too–every Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or whatever, he would bring her flowers in a pot instead of cut flowers, and they all got planted outside. We had lilies, roses of all colors, hydrangeas, honeysuckle, and some other plant I never learned the name of. Then we moved…
It’s interesting that people will buy an overpriced bouquet of something that will die off in a week, but nobody ever thinks to stop by the nursery and get a plant that will stay with you if you take care of it.
@ Wenchypoo– That’s too bad to have such a gracious tradition come to an end. Parents are such fools, eh? Generation after generation of us…
Well, hereabouts the pines that will grow in the low desert grow very fast and they’re rather brittle. Every summer we have very high winds. If you put one in the ground, before long you have a towering behemoth that threatens to fall on your house, your car, and your cat. The Aleppo pine used to be very popular here — almost every house built in the 1950s or 60s has or once had an Aleppo somewhere on the lot. But after their propensity for crushing houses became clear, people began to take them out.
@ frugalshcolar: I’m rather found of “faux,” too; as in Faux News.
@ Mrs. Accountability: You know, those silver things are now collector’s items! Seems to me I read somewhere that they’re worth some money.
@ eemusings: Christmas was my mother’s favorite holiday, and so it was the big day of the year for us. In Arabia, Americans had to be a bit careful about it, because of course Christianity was frowned upon. However, by the 1950s the locals still had a lot to learn about the West, and so I doubt if many of them had a clue what we were up to, come December. The company would fly in Santa on a helicopter and have him distribute small gifts to the littlest kids. Fortunately, it’s hard to make a connection between Santa Claus and God. 😉
I used to be a real tree hardliner. Christmas wasn’t Christmas if you didn’t have a real tree. No doubt my belief came from that fact that we always had a read tree when I was a kid. Fast forward to my first beautiful, pre-lighted Christmas tree. I loved it! So quick and easy to set up and take down. No constant search for the perfect tree. No hassles. A little greenery and an evergreen wreath gave me that Christmas-y smell. My gypsy lifestyle doesn’t allow for any decorations any more but I’m a huge advocate of the fake tree!
I’ve had 3 artificial trees:
1. 1970 – 1990 (the marriage ended but I believe the tree lasted 4 more years); 2. 1990 – 2008 (three moves; it was stored in a covered plastic trash container on the patio and mice got into it – obviously they didn’t care that it was fake;
3. 2009 – present – pre-lighted: Wonderful. You can trim it in 30 minutes. You don’t have to worry about gaping holes in the branches. You don’t have to worry about it drying out or dropping needles.
I’m okay with either but my spouse really has a strong, adverse reaction to fake plants. I’ve had some serious arguments with him about it and so to keep the peace, we’ve decided to stick with “real”.
I guess seeing my parents wrestle with real trees all through my early years was enough for me to never want to have one. That might also be because I was the unlucky one small enough to crawl under those sharp needles to water it once a week.
Fake trees for me and my family forever more. Though I’m sure my kids will decry the fake trees when they grow up, being so deprived of never having real ones.
By the way, I am quite afraid of your black widow experience. Good to know, I’ll never try that one.