{"id":4679,"date":"2010-11-23T10:02:19","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T15:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/?p=4679"},"modified":"2010-11-23T10:02:19","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T15:02:19","slug":"o-christmas-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/2010\/11\/23\/o-christmas-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"O Christmas Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

O<\/span>kay bloggy peeps, here’s another debate that started on Twitter but simply needs more than 140 characters to be fully explored.<\/p>\n

I am in the market for a new Christmas tree. I have an ‘artificial’ tree that is one of the last surviving remnants from the practice marriage. It’s nearly 20 years old (holy crap, is that true? OMG, it is. Oh my sweet lord, I am getting older faster with each passing year!) and it is a gorgeous tree. It’s just over seven feet tall, full and bushy and lovely. Every year I looked forward to putting it up — it was truly one of my most treasured holiday heirlooms. And, if you’ll remember<\/a>, last autumn it was infested by rodents. And by infested I mean I found small amounts of mouse turds in the bottom of the Christmas tree bag that the mice had chewed their way through, and shredded bits of the festive red bag woven into some of the branches.<\/p>\n

It’s a tainted tree now, even though I put it up and decorated it last Christmas and it was indeed lovely. After I shook the (literal) shit out of it. But ever since the mousecapade, I’ve just lost that lovin’ feeling for my beautiful tree. <\/p>\n

I’ve been perusing trees in stores, online and in flyers, but none of them are as lovely as mine once was. I’d actually intended to sanitize our tree by leaving it out in the blazing sun for a couple of days this summer (did you know UV rays neutralize hantavirus<\/a>?) but alas, I never got around to it. Sigh.<\/p>\n

And then this week, it occurred to me that there was another option entirely — a (formerly) live tree.<\/p>\n

You can see that I struggle with nomenclature here. Some people call formerly live trees “real” trees, but I can assure you that my plastic and metal tree is entirely real. And I can’t bring myself to call them live trees because, well, they’re well on their way to dead the moment you hack through their trunks. Hmmm, let’s go with “natural” and “artificial” for the distinction. Does that work?<\/p>\n

I have never had a natural tree at Christmas. In fact, my father (never to be confused with an environmentalist at the best of times) used to say “In the spirit of Christmas, let’s kill a tree!” I have no idea how to care for a natural tree, and really know nothing about them except that people seem to complain a lot about the mess of getting them out of the house.<\/p>\n

I asked the Twitterverse for their opinions on natural versus artificial trees, and got nine responses. Six were enthusiastic promoters of natural trees, one considered switching to a natural tree until she saw the amount of accessories that would have to be acquired, one happily switched from natural to artificial and never looked back, and one lamented the year when the natural tree was knocked over four times, spilling water over the hardwood each time.<\/p>\n

Water to be spilled? Oh dear. Three rambunctious and curious boys and we’ve never yet knocked down a tree — but then, we’ve never had gorgeous new hardwood floors, either. You just know that those floors will be a magnet for water to be spilled.<\/p>\n

So I’m making a list (and checking it twice) of the pros and cons of each kind of tree.<\/p>\n

Natural trees:<\/p>\n

Pro<\/strong> : lovely scent of evergreen in house
\nPro<\/strong> : can make a family expedition out of acquiring one (insert romantic visions of red-cheeked boys, sleigh rides and Rockwell-esque winter scenes here)
\nPro<\/strong> : don’t have to store it in the garage where mice can poop in it
\nPro<\/strong> : apparently eco-friendlier than I would have thought, as they’re grown particularly for harvest. Nobody laments the harvesting of carrots, right?
\nCon<\/strong> : must buy a new one each year
\nCon<\/strong> : you can’t predict what you’ll get with a natural tree (I like sameness, remember)
\nCon<\/strong> : have to get (potentially wet, snowy, dirty) tree onto the car (insert comical vision of Beloved, several meters of rope, and the roof rack of the Mazda here) and then into the house
\nCon<\/strong> : natural trees require maintenance and must be watered regularly
\nCon<\/strong> : gigantic PITA to get it out of the house without a forest of dropped needles everywhere
\nCon<\/strong> : sad to see discarded trees at the curb, waiting for garbage pickup
\nCon<\/strong> : have to take down tree according to garbage-day pick-up schedule<\/p>\n

Artificial trees:<\/p>\n

Pro<\/strong> : flexible schedule – can put up in October and take down in April if I am so inclined
\nPro<\/strong> : one investment now should last 20 years or more
\nPro<\/strong> : having the same tree year after year has strong nostalgia factor
\nPro<\/strong> : no need to be at the mercy of capricious weather for acquisition of the tree
\nPro<\/strong> : artificial trees come packed in tidy boxes that fit handily in the back of my car
\nPro<\/strong> : no open containers of water waiting to be spewed onto the hardwood
\nPro<\/strong> : less needly mess
\nCon<\/strong> : needs rodent-free off-season storage space<\/p>\n

What say ye, bloggy peeps? Natural or artificial and why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay bloggy peeps, here’s another debate that started on Twitter but simply needs more than 140 characters to be fully explored. I am in the market for a new Christmas tree. I have an ‘artificial’ tree that is one of the last surviving remnants from the practice marriage. It’s nearly 20 years old (holy crap, … Continue reading “O Christmas Tree”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-culture","category-happy-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4679"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4684,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions\/4684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}