The Christmas Tree - Fake or Real?

I never even thought about fake Christmas tree. It seemed so .. fake? I totally envisioned Jesse hauling upstairs a giant pine I deemed acceptable at the local lot. About 9 feet, long needles, fluffy, and possibly still with traces of fox fur from sheltering all things cute and furry in the wild woods. Never mind that we *apparently* have 8 foot ceilings. That’s Jesse’s problem.

Until we walked into Target for some lights, and there was the 7’5” Slim Cashmere Pre Lit Pointy Needled Happiness. It was $99 and looked magical. You can't see the trunk through the branches, and it's all types of fluffy (and pointy) It's a 'slim' version, and they make no full one that I could find. I was a little bummed - I think that cuts down on the number of ornaments I was going to wrap it with. But slim fits perfectly in our living room, without having to move furniture to the garage. Score.

Of course, I can’t just buy the tree. I must research every fake tree available. Speaking of which, did you know Macy’s sells pre-decorated trees? Themed and everything. I can’t find them online, but they were in the store. I only imagine they sell them with decorations, because they are pretty sad looking trees for $700-$900.

So, having read every online review (23 at Target alone and all but 2 magical) and posting an online poll on a favorite message board, we decided to go with fake.

It looks amazing. It did in Target, too, but running around and looking at all the other trees further convinced me it’s the most beautiful one. I even went to the lot – not only did they not have my favorite long needled ones, but they had baked a little in the SoCal sun, and looked dry and yellow. Dry and yellow in mid November doesn’t look good for December. Or January 7th – the Eastern Orthodox Christmas.



Pros:

It's beautiful, on all sides. (No more spinning the tree around to find the fullest spot!)
Jesse didn't have to haul a real tree upstairs
It fits perfectly in the apartment
Pre lit - once you assemble the 3 sections together - it pretty much looks fantastic, even pre-fluffing.
It holds heavy ornaments

Cons:

It doesn't smell like pine. To be fixed shortly by pine scented candles/wall plug ins.

And, while it doesn't smell like pine, it has adorable little pine cones.




I have a small collection of Christmas ornaments, and we’ll expand it a bit more this year. We already got some clear glass balls – to fill with glitter? And post Catholic Christmas I plan a full on combative invasion of Macy’s, Bloomingdales, and Rogers Garden invasion for the sale ornaments. I do this every year in lieu of Black Friday. I might don elbow pads to better push people out of the way.