Dec 16 Why Keep Buying Christmas Trees Year After Year?
When I was younger, I looked forward to the annual ritual of bringing home the tree at Christmas. My husband and I would hope in the car, drive around to the various lots looking at Christmas Trees until we found the perfect specimen, then tied it to the roof for that precarious drive home. The tree only fell off once, but there were enough close calls, especially when it was windy, to make that drive my least favorite part of the experience. One year we even went to a tree farm to cut our own. It had snowed heavily the night before, so talk about your White Christmas Trees. Cutting down a seven foot tall spruce that’s blanketed in snow is more work than it sounds, especially when it’s below freezing, you had to walk twenty minutes through knee deep snow to reach the Christmas Trees and you’re equipped with a hand saw. After that experience, we almost switched to Artificial Christmas Trees, but my husband talked me out of it.
When we had kids, the annual tree-buying trip began to transform from a welcome ritual to an onerous chore. The problem is that kids can be a lot of work and they want to be involved with the process. As a parent, of course you want to involve them too. When you have a pair of toddlers bundled in snowsuits, with running noses and they’re complaining about the cold outside, then complaining that it’s too hot in the van, it begins to wear you down. They want to help choose the tree, but their criteria for Christmas Trees is not necessarily what I would call rational, and so the stage is set for unhappy children. I think White Christmas Trees are pretty and so are pink ones, but just because my daughters like those doesn’t mean they’d be right for my house.
After a few years of stoically enduring this, I suggested to my husband that this was the year we should stop the Christmas Trees madness and consider Artificial Christmas Trees instead. I was surprised when he agreed, but only if we bought a realistic one, like the trees he’d seen on christmastreemarket.com’s web site. While I was initially taken aback by the coincidence that he’d been thinking along the same lines as me (going so far as to apparently start shopping for Artificial Christmas Trees behind my back), I soon realized that he’d done his homework. Besides the fact that putting up the Christmas Tree every year would be a simple task going forward instead of the ordeal it had become, we’d likely save money over the long term, it would look better since these were very realistic Artificial Christmas Trees but didn’t have “bad spots” to hide, the trees were pre-lit, and, since there was no danger of a drying tree being a fire hazard, there would be no mad rush to take it down and dispose of it the day after Christmas.
