Ask Lemmy

A real tree 🎄 The smell and the beautiful imperfection, that is Christmas 🥰

Real every time. I feel bad for the poor tree but nothing beats the smell of a fresh Christmas tree in December.

Ceramic is the only way to go.

When I can be bothered (not often) I get a real one. The smell is amazing, it looks great and the imperfections and variations make it look much nicer. Oh, and the best bit? When I take it down I get to take it to the goat farm down the road - they go absolutely fucking nuts for fir trees.

we have a saying at our house, 'its not christmas until you you kill something'

thus, its always a live tree

I used to have a pine sapling that I grow in a pot, and always used it as a Christmas tree in winter. But one year it died. I tried to grow another after that, but failed twice. Now my confidence of keeping a sapling alive is all gone. Maybe I should make a cardboard one this year. Or maybe just use a different plant that's not a pine, fir or yew.

Both!

Since my kids were young, we've made it a tradition to go out to forest service land and cut down a real tree (with a cheap permit), which helps with wildfire mitigation. The trees are usually kind of scrawny and awkward as they're not grown on a tree farm where they're all spaced apart and tended to during their growth, but the experience is fun. We put our cheap, lightweight ornaments on that.

Our main tree is a fake one that we can put up earlier.

Our annual tradition is to go out into the bush and cut one down. Then we make a fire and have a hot dog roast.

I'm lucky enough to have a yard, so years ago I planted a dwarf spruce to be our living Christmas tree. We string it up with solar lights for the holidays.

Neither!

I just put lights on my fig tree lol

It's like $10 to pay the Forest Service for a tag to cut one down yourself in the USA

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.

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.

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.

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.

When I was a kid we did a real tree. When we visited my brother last year we did a small real tree. Normally we have a fake tree.

We had some deaths in the family and some sicknesses, so we weren't feeling festive last year and set up a 3 foot tall fake tree before we skipped town. This year, today, I set up the big huge fake tree as a surprise while my wife wasn't home. I'm hoping the Christmassy decor without the work will get her into the Christmas spirit. We'll see if she's glad or annoyed. :-D

I live in Australia. Everyone here does fake trees.

This year we bought a real one, but we’ve used artificial before. I’m pretty neutral on the whole thing; love real trees, but artificial trees at least don’t kill real trees (unless you count the likely toxic manufacturing process)

Fake.

The real ones are expensive, throwaway fire hazards.

After 3-4 years of throwing away real trees you’d easily have enough for a nice artificial tree that will last decades.

Option 3: we don't buy any trees.

No because that's not feasible for us

Real. But I live in a pretty foresty area and just go to the neighbourhood farmer where I also get my eggs from and my poultry and it's not pricey and goes into the fireplace once it's dry enough.

As an asthmatic, fake trees are the only way to go. The mold real trees have and produce as they die often cause croup cough among asthmatic. You only need croup for one Christmas before you figure out it's just not worth it.

Real. Every year, my partner and I and other partners or friends are welcome to join us, go out into the forests and legally cut down a tree.

It's a pain in the ass, it's adventure, it's a party, it's fun. It's also way cheaper than just buying one. I think we paid like $13 for the state park purpose licence this past weekend.

I have a tradition I made up for this, too. Every year, I cut a puck off the bottom of the tree before I put it in the stand. I drill a hole through it, label it with the year with a marker, and hang it from the tree. I think this will be our 7th year? It hasn't been decorated yet because our living room is super small and a disaster and the tree is currently in the kitchen.

I find that the challenge gives purpose to time, and gives us excuse to socialize more in these dark months.