The Great Debate

It's the best time of the year again. Christmas.

My family and I enjoy this holiday more than any other and we usually go all out - major league tree, greenery on the mantle, Griswoldesque lights on the house, the whole shebang. We do our best to keep things measured with the real purpose of the celebration - which, after all, is the point of everything. But I have to admit that we take advantage of our Anglo-Saxon roots and get engrossed in the symbolic traditions. Maybe dunked head first into the symbolic traditions is a better way of saying it.

Growing up, our parents (I have two older brothers) raised us with the good sense of finding a beautiful work of nature, tearing it from God's earth, and planting it in a cold, steel stand filled with sugar water. Of course it took three days for the sap to wear off of my hands after helping to raise the corpse-tree, but it was well worth the effort. You can't beat the scent of a live, albeit newly deceased, Christmas tree.

As my wife and I started a family of our own, we brought our families' traditions along for the ride. One of my additions to the smorgasbord was the live Christmas tree. "I won't have it any other way...we've gotta have a live tree." After all - what's the point if you don't get sap on your hands around the holidays? Year after year, we made our trek to the nearest tree lot to pick out the annual "victim." I love tree lots - row after row of God's finest, farm-raised fir and spruce under the yellowish hue of incandescent bulbs hanging from ten foot two-by-twos temporarily stuck into the ground.

After some time though, the annual trip became more of chore. Kind of like painting the house, only without the smell of latex and fear of ladders. So we made a fateful decision. A life altering decision. It was time to cross over the dark side...and buy a fake tree.

The first fake tree was, well, fake. It smelled like polyvinyl chloride and the needles felt like construction paper. Sing it with me: "Oh tannenbaum, Oh tannenbaum, how smelly are your branches." I told myself that I'd get used to it.

My wife and I found that there are some advantages to an impostor spruce: you don't have to refill the stand with sugar water every few days, there isn't a trail of needles through the house upon entry and exit, and the break even period is about two years (that's my management side coming out). But the needles still shed, which kind of surprised me. On the other hand, after the PVC smell subsides, there isn't a lasting scent. To compensate, we started burning pine scented candles in the living room.

Fake trees are convenient. They are cost effective. They look perfect. But I miss breaking out the bow saw and hacking off the bottom six inches of the trunk, turning the tree to hide flat spots, and the tree sap on my hands. I do miss the tree sap so.

In the end, it is simply a matter of preference. We chose to side with convenience, cost effectiveness, and perfection. Our fake tree is easy (really easy since we upgraded to the one with built in lights) and consistent. It is clean, neat, and hassle free.

But I miss the mess. I miss the trip to the tree lots and their yellow hued lights. I miss the tree sap.