This is bound be a hot topic, so let me say right at the start that this is entirely my opinion. I'm not going off and any scientific research or public opinions here. This is strictly my statement for you to agree or disagree with. Artificial Christmas trees are better than real Christmas trees. The horror! Right? Bear with me while I explain.

In the 20+ years of Christmas at home with my parents, we never had a real Christmas tree. Never. It was always the same fake tree that was packed away in the box in the basement that got hauled upstairs and put together. And it looked great! Here's what part of it looked like in what was probably Christmas of 1972 with my Texaco gas station playset and my U-Haul truck.

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We had that tree for so long that the color on the color coded branches faded away and we had to put masking tape on the ends with numbers to know where each branch went, but every Christmas it was the same tree.

Why is a fake tree so much better than a real tree? Here are three reasons:

1. No hauling the tree back to your house.

If you've got a truck or a trailer this probably isn't much of an issue for you, but strapping a 6 foot tree to your roof isn't fun and can't be good for the paint. Hauling a box up from the basement and setting your tree up in less than an hour is priceless. Well actually, about 100 bucks or so for a nice fake tree.

2. Fake trees look better

An artificial tree has a nice uniform shape and is much easier to hang decorations on. Ever try to hang a heavy ornament on a branch of a real tree and try over and over again to find a branch that will support it? No issues with a fake tree. Their branches won't bend unless you want them too. Each Christmas you'll know exactly how much space your tree will take up. I won't name names, but one Christmas a family member had a tree that was so big we had a hard time squeezing into the room. Okay it was my cousin Lori. Don't tell her I ratted her out.

3. Disposal

You may like the smell of that tree, but if you're like me, you hate all the needles that get left behind by the time you get to disposing of it. In larger cities in Maine, you have to throw it roadside for the city trash collectors to pick up and when you live on a second floor apartment and haul that bad boy through a long hallway, down the stairs and out the door, you're going to leave a long trail of needles. I don't care how much you water that tree. They only last five weeks, so don't hang on to it much past Christmas as much as you hate the season ending.

This year was the first year since Michele and I have been together that we had a fake tree. Here's 2019's real tree.

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And here's 2020's fake tree. Michele wants me to add that this is still a work in progress. Really?

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Set up was easy and will probably take even less time next year now that we figured out how it works.

I know all the purists are saying get a real tree, it's tradition. Well maybe it was tradition in your house growing up, but I've always done it the easier way and it doesn't make Christmas any less special to me.

 

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