Fake Plastic Trees

A few years ago we got smart and bought our first (and only) artificial Christmas tree.  It was kind of a surprise thing when we were in City Mill (we even supported local business in the process!) and saw that they had one, and I mean, ONE fake tree on sale.  It cost us probably under $30, and it's perfect for us.

Now, I've had a real tree in my house my entire life.  Once, I even bought a Christmas tree when it was snowing!  Not in Hawaii, of course, but it was as close to movie-perfect as it gets.  I remember listening to Fiji on the radio while the guy strapped the tree to the roof of my car.  It was huge and unwieldy and didn't give off any good smells, but it was snowing and I could live with that.  So, yeah, real trees.  Mmm.  That smell is distinctive, isn't it?  And it was the leading reason we kept buying them.  That and the fact that buying a fake one just seem to make the holiday more plastic.  (If you'd like to hear what a plastic Christmas sounds like, listen to this song and find out.  By the way, I love the song.  It totally captures the spirit of a consumer-driven, canned Muzak holiday.)

But then you kind of begin to realize that it's just a symbol and you can make a symbol out of just about anything.  And you can also make it mean whatever you want it to. Maybe this fake tree symbolizes our love of the holiday as well as our love of nature and preserving the environment.  It means we don't participate in the consumerism of finding the best place to buy the best tree at the best price.  It's about peace of mind and conservationism.  The same tree has been a part of our family for the last three years, you know?  So it's like family.  Family you bring out into the living room for a few weeks then pack in a box in the closet for the rest of the year.  Okay, so it's kind of what you'd like to do to some family, some of the time.

It's now at the point that I don't really miss the real tree smell, and enjoying the fact that my new tree doesn't shed like a neurotic cat was pretty immediate.  There are no bald spots, no messing with it for hours initially (then a few minutes for days afterwards) to make sure it's standing straight, and I don't even have to forget to water it!  One of the best aspects of having this fake tree is that we can put it up exactly when we have the opportunity to do so.  Yesterday, for example, when we had only a window of about an hour to put it up, we didn't have to go to the store and spend 30 minutes looking for the perfect imperfect tree, let it sit outside and drop for another 30 minutes, put it in the stand and fiddle with it for another hour to make sure it's straight and won't topple over, to finally put the lights on and then realize the tree STILL isn't straight.  We had time to put it up and decorate it all before Charlie had to go to work.  And that was the best thing.