WHAT....?

Jill

Jill

Sugar Cookie : GingerScraps Praise Team
....type of Christmas tree do you have?

Real? Of any particular variety?

Artificial?

Big?

Small?

None?

We have an artificial tree, real trees seem to not be so popular here in Australia as far as I know. Only a small number of people I know use a real tree. My daughter in law has a real tree each year, it has to be a particular type of cypress that has the "true Christmas fragrance" that brings back memories to her of childhood Christmases. For many years when our kids were little and we had not a cent to spare, we would use a branch off one of the many gum trees growing on my family farm where I grew up. My Dad would cut a suitable branch down and bring it in during the week before Christmas so that the kids could enjoy the decorating of it (I wish I had remembered to remind him of this tradition a couple of months ago before he passed away). When we stopped getting the gumtree branch (the kids would have been by then tweens and teens I think), we changed to a fairly large artificial tree but now, with only the two of us at home, we just have a small fold out tree about 3 feet high that sits on a side table. It has optic fibre lights that flash on and off and doesn't really need decoration, it is pretty enough. However the lovely granddaughters still love to drape everything in sight with Christmas decorations so they came in at the weekend and now the Christmas tree is up and adorned:)

What is YOUR story?
 
We have an artificial tree. We've had the same one for the past 15 years! Every year I think of getting a new tree with the lights already attached and the tree already assembled, but the one we have is still perfectly fine. I can't imagine just throwing after all these years and all the memories associated with it. This year the kids did everything by themselves...the assembly, the lights, and the ornaments.

It's a pretty tall tree, maybe 7ft. It's full but we do not put the bottom two rows to make space for presents.
 
I have an artificial tree that is approaching senior citizenship. It's got to be about 20 years old I think. I don't get real ones, not really sure why. As for wanting the real smell, scentsy warmers do the trick for me LOL I also leave the bottom two rows empty due those pesky family dogs. Well that's not entirely true I fill those rows and they knock them down, but whatever.
 
We have a real tree - 3/4 our state is still covered in forests (really!) and to most of us here we don't get why anyone would have a fake tree - LOL. I honestly can't think of one person I know who has a fake tree. When I was a kid we would just go out into the woods in back of our house and cut down a tree and haul it back. Now Christmas tree farms are all over and we have supported a local farm since we moved back here (13 years now). They're a wonderful family and I like to support local businesses (plus we don't have woods in back of our house where we live now ;) ) We get our wreaths there also. Our tree is usually 6.5 feet or so and fairly full but not too fat since the ornaments don't hang well if it's too full. We don't do tinsel or garland because the cats eat it and we have mostly homemade ornaments except for my daughter's Hallmark ornaments that my parents take her to pick out each year since she was born.
 
We have always had an artificial tree and I got a new one about 2 years ago. It is around 7 feet tall but is a skinny one with lights already on it. It is full but just not as big round. We decorate with red/silver and use beads instead of garland. My husband says our tree looks like a model tree from the department stores and I just love sitting down in the evening with all the other lights off except for the tree. So peaceful and relaxing.
 
We ALWAYS get a real tree.

I really love the whole process of hunting for the perfect tree. We have gone to Christmas Tree Lots before, but we really prefer to go up into the mountains and get one cut. We used to cut them ourselves, but now we travel to a place called Apple Hill that has tree farms with evergreens and/or apple trees. We make a day of it, getting apple donuts, hot cocoa, apple pie, etc and then going to another farm to find our tree. We walk up and down the hills to find the perfect tree and when we do, we yell "Cutter" and a handy young man shows up with a saw to cut down our prize. Usually the kids get to help with the sawing. Then we put it in the back of the truck and drive home. My husband washes it down (for dirt and critters that might have been at home there) and we bring it in to light and decorate. For 13 years, we lived in a house with 10' ceilings, so we would search for a tree that was 10' (and few times, they were like 10'1" and would scrape the ceiling).
Now, we have a house that has 16-18' ceilings, so our tree this year is even taller! Our course, trying to put a tree topper and ornaments up 16' is a bit of a challenge! Good thing my son is 6'4" - he did all the stuff at the top
 
We always had artificial trees growing up because my sister, who has asthma, is allergic to evergreens. I'll never forget the one Christmas eve that she ended up in the ER, unable to breathe, as we were at a relative's place, and they had a real tree. So needless to say, no real trees for a very important reason!

As an adult, I've always had an artificial tree as well, mainly because it is easier and less messy. Now that we have three Sphynx cats, the artificial tree is also a lot safer for them - we don't need to worry about them trying to eat the needles, poke themselves with the needles, or knock the tree over. They can't knock it over because it is in a heavy pot at the bottom, and it takes a lot of force to move it! It's a fairly small one (6 feet with the base, but only 5 feet of actual tree). It's also pre-lit, which is nice as we don't have to string the lights. We do decorate it, but don't go over-the-top. We have some beads instead of garland (garland and tinsel are totally unsafe for cats, so we don't use either), and a variety of non-breakable ornaments. Before cats we had some lovely glass ornaments, but we donated them all to Value Village. as we didn't want to risk the cats knocking an ornament off the tree and breaking it, potentially hurting themselves in the process. We also had a larger tree before cats, which was also donated (to the Salvation Army, for a family who can't afford a tree).

When we lived in Germany, we had a tiny little tree, as we knew we were only going to be living there for four years, so didn't want to invest in a large tree (we had left ours back in storage in Canada when we were posted to Germany). I have some very old layouts of that tree in one of my Germany scrapbooks.

I haven't made a layout of this year's tree yet, but you can see one year of the Before Cats tree here: https://gallery.gingerscraps.net/showphoto.php?photo=270077&title=merry-merry-merry&cat=500
 
We have an artificial one. It's older...but the one hubby and I bought the first year we were married so it has a little sentimental value. I may break down and buy a pre-lit one when they go on sale at the end of the season. Stringing the lights is my least favorite part. We have a new puppy this year...she's just a year old and her first Christmas with us and having the tree up has been a little challenging. She likes to hide underneath it (all 75lbs of her) and chew the branches...she's also chewed a couple of my ornaments...she's probably like "you yell at me for bringing a stick in the house...and here you bring in a WHOLE tree" LOL
 
Those are all terrific stories ladies, thank you for sharing! I am having a chuckle over Heather's tree which is approaching senior citizenship :D. also chuckling over Cindy's puppy's probable thoughts on a tree entering the house:D
I love the stories about going out into the woods or to a tree farm to choose the perfect tree.
As I sit here in my small single level home with the regulation minimum ceiling height of 8ft, my mind is boggling over 18ft celings!!! I love the thought of a real tree although I am a tad uncomfortable with all the trees being cut down each year but if that is the purpose for which they are grown, I can live with that:). Some more questions: How long does a real tree last? Do you mount it in water or wet sand or?? How do you get the really huge ones safely anchored so that they are not likely to fall over? What happens to the tree at the end of the Christmas season? Thanks so much for sharing your so interesting stories ladies *hug*
 
Your "one year before cats" tree is gorgeous Caylynn, and just look at all those gifts!!!
 
Jill said:
Some more questions: How long does a real tree last? Do you mount it in water or wet sand or?? How do you get the really huge ones safely anchored so that they are not likely to fall over? What happens to the tree at the end of the Christmas season? Thanks so much for sharing your so interesting stories ladies *hug*
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We have a heavy duty, wide based stand that holds like a half gallon of water. It has 4 long metal spikes that you turn into the tree trunk until the tree is stable. I usually do tie it and anchor it to the wall (it's in a corner) and we've never had a problem with it tipping over until this year, which is a whole other story and one that is a bit supernatural. We usually have our tree up for about 3 weeks since it's cut fresh and hasn't been sitting around in a tree lot for days before bringing home. In our city you take your tree to the end of your street and they pick them up and chip them for recycling for various uses.
 
Thanks for the answers Marie, I like hearing how others do things in various parts of the world. The supernatural tipping of this years Christmas tree sounds intriguing:)
 
We have two 7-1/2 foot artificial trees, one is at least 25 years old, solid as a rock, we have it downstairs with ornaments we made, our son made, our grandkids made or I was given during my 35 years as an elementary school librarian, it has 1000 multicolored lights. Upstairs tree is an artificial frasier fir, lost track of the number of lights LOL, about 1500 clear. It's decorated with Swarovski snowflakes that I've collected since 1998 and ornaments of the type I remember having when I was growing up. I have a few of the originals from home, I wish my mom had saved more of them. The old mercury glass are my favorites. The sunroom has a four foot Colorado spruce, new this year. We had been using the one we had sitting on our tv when I was growing up. I think it was one of the original artificial trees. One of the light sets was out and as we were trying to remove it we noticed the branches were black so we figured for safety sake we better replace it. Sunroom also has a three foot fiber optic tree that we gave my dad his first Christmas in the nursing home. And then the two ceramic trees I made during the "ceramic" phase of my life along with a Nativity set. We have this wooden butler that sits in our foyer, usually holding a candy dish, but during Christmas he holds a two foot tree. More than you wanted to know, I'm sure!
 
Not at all Jeanne, I love your Christmas tree(s) story and am in awe of the fact that you have so many. I hope some of them will appear in the gallery if they haven't already:) Thank you for sharing your story.
 
Jill said:
Your "one year before cats" tree is gorgeous Caylynn, and just look at all those gifts!!!
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Thank you! That was the year before we moved to Germany, so there were a lot of gifts for family under the tree (including my niece and nephews), and some ones that had been sent to us from family living away. We haven't had as big a Christmas since then.
 
We have had a real tree since we moved here. (3 years) DH's uncle has one of the biggest tree farms in the area and before we moved back, we were too far away to get one.

This year though, we put in a woodstove insert into our fireplace and couldn't have a real tree as it wouldn't fit in the room (we can only set our living room one way due to the fireplace and the sliding glass doors on the back wall) So, long story short, we couldn't get a real tree because of the stove and fire danger.

We found a beautiful 7.5 foot artificial pre lit tree. It's gorgeous!! And the best part...we got it for 60% off! LOL. I'm hoping that it packs up nicely and the lights don't get screwed up like our last pre lit tree years ago. We ended up cutting all the lights off of that one because they kept shorting out after packing the tree away.

I love my woodstove but am bummed that I can't hang anything on the mantle of the fireplace this year (we had to put our TV above the fireplace on the wall for space) and I really had to be creative for stockings being hung. I hung them on the bannister to the stairs and it's okay but it's not the same.
 
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