On the last day of a class I taught this year, the students and I got into a passionate conversation. About trees.
A student had written a column, for an assignment, that centered around her fond childhood memories of the real Christmas trees her family brought home and decorated each holiday season.
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In the piece, she expressed an admiration for those grown-from-the-ground trees and an aversion to the artificial ones that so many people buy. She shared personal memories of the former and presented data-backed arguments against the latter.
Her column led her classmates to consider their own opinions, and, in that way, it was successful. I told her that.
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I also told her I disagreed with her.
In the great divide that exists this time of year between those who prefer what nature made and those who choose to pull its look-alike from a box, I am a fake Christmas tree devotee.
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I prefer to assemble a trunk rather than place a thirsty one in a water-filled stand in my house. I choose to adjust wiry limbs, rather than breathe in the piney smell of unmovable ones. I want the copy over the real deal.
When people buy real Christmas trees, they tend to proudly note that when they post photos on social media. If you’ve never noticed, search #realtree on Twitter. You will see adorable pets hanging out near “real trees.” You will see cars carting “real trees.” You will see lights twinkling, decorations dangling and people smiling near “real trees.”
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Type in #faketree and you will mostly see people making fun of the 50-foot-tall Christmas tree that was set on fire outside Fox News’s New York City headquarters.
“Well, it really wasn’t a ‘tree,'” wrote one person. “It was a man made scaffolding with an artificial facade to make you believe it was a Christmas ‘tree’. It was a lie.”
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“One thing it wasn’t — a tree,” wrote another.
Fox News deserves criticism for devoting 36 hours to coverage of its scorched tree when there were so many more newsworthy stories, but the focus of the jokes should be on the way the network’s personalities reacted, not on the fakeness of its tree.
‘We will not be defeated’: 36 hours of Fox News covering its own Christmas tree fire
Real trees are beautiful and impressive, but fake Christmas trees also deserve some respect.
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I grew up with my family putting up a fake tree most years. My dad still has the one from my childhood, and each December, after he assembles it, he hangs on it four brass ornaments that bear the names of my siblings and me. The one with “Theresa” shows a baby in a cradle, since I was the youngest.
Those memories, along with safety concerns about house fires caused by dry trees, made me lean toward buying an artificial one once I formed my own family.
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But what solidified my loyalty was a scrawny tree bought in a moment of accepted defeat.
At the time, my sons were 2 and 4 and my husband was out of the country, traveling for work. Since most of my relatives live in other states and I was working full time, my mom flew into town to help me with the kids. My family didn’t own a Christmas tree because we had spent the previous two years living in another country; before that, we usually traveled to stay with relatives during the holidays.
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Looking back, it probably wouldn’t have mattered much to my sons if I hadn’t found a tree. They probably wouldn’t have cared if their gifts ended up on a blanket on the floor on Christmas morning. They were still at that age when a toy from the bargain bin at Target felt like a huge get.
But I would have cared. I would have felt as if I was handing them a half-painted portrait of a day that my parents had consistently put thought and effort into making memorable. Growing up, that was the day when we wore new clothes to church and tried not to get them dirty, even as aunts kissed us with their red lipstick and filled our plates with wobbly pies. That was the day when I saw cousins I hadn’t seen all year and my Tia Cherola, whom I’ve written about, pulled from a bag thoughtful and unique presents for each of us. It was a day of happy chaos, and at the center, always, was a twinkling tree.
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On the December day my mom and I ended up at Target with my kids, most of the artificial trees had already been purchased. All that remained were behemoths too large for one person and her aging mother to carry up flights of stairs (we lived in a townhouse) and small or oddly shaped ones. The one I picked was maybe 1？ feet across at its widest point by about six feet high. It was more basketball player than sumo wrestler.
When we took it out of the box, it looked ridiculous standing naked in my living room. Wrapped in lights, it looked slightly better. I didn’t have many ornaments, so I looked around the house and turned the many Perler bead creations my 4-year-old had brought home from pre-K into some. He had made hearts, fish and stars from those waxy beads that melt with heat. Together, he and I picked the best star and made it our tree topper.
When we finally finished, he and his brother stood in their footed superhero pajamas staring in awe at the tree. At our tree.
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“Santa is gonna love it. He will come every day to our house to see it!” the 4-year-old declared in a moment I caught on video.
When I bought that tree, I considered it a temporary placeholder. I figured we’d buy something more realistic-looking the following year — and we did. But that year, my sons asked us to also put up that skinny tree, and they’ve wanted us to do that every year since. We even have tiny ornaments for it now.
In the past five years, the tree has lost one of its legs, which I replaced with a piece of crudely cut cardboard, and the trunk has developed a few bald spots. But we have no intention of getting rid of it. It’s the keeper of our holiday memories. It’s the tree that was standing in our living room the year my sons wrapped a dozen little homemade presents for me, each one labeled “Mama” in their handwriting. It’s the tree that saw my younger son’s mouth drop open that year Santa borrowed his new instant camera to take a photo of a reindeer’s eye.
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It’s the tree that I have no doubt, if it lasts long enough, will witness those two little boys become men who bring more people into our family.
This year, about 75 percent of U.S. households, or nearly 94 million homes, are expected to display Christmas trees, despite extreme weather events and supply chain issues that affected the availability, according to the American Christmas Tree Association’s 11th annual Christmas tree NielsenIQ survey.
I hadn’t realized that association existed until I started looking for a measurement of the country’s divide between real and artificial trees. The survey found that 16 percent of the trees on display this year are farm-grown and 84 percent are artificial. (And, no, artificial trees aren’t destroying the environment. The association cites a study on its website that found if a fake tree is used for at least four years, its carbon footprint is smaller than if a household purchased a real one each year.)
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Interestingly, the survey also found evidence that people are becoming less split over which type of tree is better: An increasing number of households are choosing to display both kinds.
Jami Warner, the executive director of the association, described that finding in a news release as “a positive indicator that consumers see Christmas trees in the same way we do at the ACTA — there really is no such thing as a bad Christmas tree, and the best tree is the one that fits a family’s traditions, preferences, and budget.”
Your perfect tree might be a $150 one cut fresh from a farm or one given to you free through a Buy Nothing group. It might come in classic green or stand out in white, pink or red. It might be the lushest one on the lot or it might be the scrawny one sitting mostly alone on a shelf.
When it comes to artificial trees versus real ones, the debate often ends the same way: nostalgia wins.
I told my student that as well.
Read more from Theresa Vargas.