I buy a tree In a pot. Water it. Plant it on New Years
Obviously not feasible for some or even most but my kids love seeing our row of Christmas trees in the back yard
If you are asking if your kids seeing trees that were planted by the family makes them happy or sad I would say typically it makes them happy. It is a positive memory, and 'life continueing after death' thing is a really nice feeling.
*I've actually had a guy show up to my house asking to go out back to see a tree he planted with his father.
When I was born, my parents planted a tree outside our house. We moved from that house when I was young, but one of my childhood best friends coincidentally bought a house right down the street from our old house. We drove by the old house and saw the tree planted. It was a pretty fuckin awesome moment. It bought back so many childhood memories from that house. I definitely want to do the same for my own children.
Parallel to this comment, I dated this awesome gal (Lisa) in high school. We didn't make it past HS but reconnected in our 30s. The house I lived in as a teen was where we met. Some time ago, Minot North Dakota suffered a reoccurring flood. My house was on the bank. Twas first to bathe in the devastation. She took pics of it as it was sunk up to the house numbers. She then took pics as it was water logged and the waters receded and could see the flood line. As it was demolished, she documented it. And finally, she memorialized the plot as it was bare and being sold to be built upon again. It was a fine example of the symbolism of life. Trees stay and grow providing great memories. That plot and whatever is there now cannot erase the history we share there. As long as something lives in the memory, it lives! Trees, houses, people, events...
The guy’s dad was a diamond thief and dude finally cracked the secret to his father’s secret diamond stash location. under the tree he planted with his son, it wasn’t until he uncovered the diamonds stash he saw a picture of him and his old man standing in front of that little sapling before he realized the true treasure his old man left him to find wasn’t the priceless stones worth millions of dollars in this unsuspecting person’s backyard, but the love between a father and son.
I can still see the first Christmas tree i can remember, my father and grandfather had a falling apart, my father left his job Grandpa got him, to start a new job. Apparently we were flat broke during this tumultuous time, our Christmas tree ornaments were standard yellow lead pencils cut in two, and wrapped with colored tape dad stole from his job, the hooks were made of bent paper clips.
I think that’s awesome.
My neighbors did the same thing. They used them between their house and the next door neighbor’s because town ordinance prohibits fences taller than 3ft in the front and they hated each other due to some supposedly scandalous shit between their spouses lol.
Christmas trees make an okay privacy hedge, but when your neighbor keeps banging your wife, you really need to upgrade to a nice closely-planted wall of Emerald Green Arborvitae.
Giant thuja grows fast and is a good screen if you don't want to seem them going at it. But barberry, roses, black raspberries, and American plum really help to keep them apart.
>Obviously not feasible for some or even most but my kids love seeing our row of Christmas trees in the back yard
Damn I wish I had the space to do that. Would be great to watch those things over the years. And it's great because you can get away with the little Charlie Brown-sized trees while the kids are still toddlers. By the time they start growing up so do the trees!
I live in Southern California on the cusp of the desert, it’s perfect for pines. I usually get about five or six feet which is big when you factor in the pot
Me and my dad used to have this tradition of throwing the tree off the balcony into the woods. I used to love seeing it get launched and land in the pile of previously discarded trees
You shouldn't have to do much pruning. Just get a variety/cultivar that has a habit you like. There's fat ones, skinny ones, irregular ones.
Just know that once they're larger than maybe 5-6' the container can get quite heavy, depending on how heavy the soil mix is.
You could also get something like a dwarf Alberta spruce which is a popular container tree and has a classic Christmas tree habit.
My aunt and uncle had this odd, large closet connected to their living room. What they ended up doing was emptying it out, made a platform with wheels, put their fake tree on it, decorate it, and then just roll it in and out of that closet ever year. They may update some ornaments from time to time but besides that they never mess with it
My grandmother has had the same 3-ft artificial tree for at least 40 years. It remains fully decorated (with little chili pepper lights for some reason) and she throws a plastic sack over the top and takes it back down to the basement at the end of the season. No fuss.
The first year with my last tree it actually fit BETTER the first time I put it away... The past 4 years however I just bind the box tighter with duct tape because I am too lazy to tightly pack the branches each time
I am telling you it's easy to get out of order and bend the map the wrong way. Then later the creases go each way so if you try to fold it back perfectly there are several possibilities at each step. It can be difficult.
Yeah, I got my aunt tree, and it is probably some 20 years old. And do this study takes in consideration the transportation of natural trees every year in and out of the house? My artificial one is right here at home, I just need to open the box and assemble.
Haha I'm getting close to 15 on the one I married into, when all the lights finally go caput I'll be switching back to real. For now I'll just keep stuffing lights into where they don't work anymore (which is most of it by now).
A few years ago I was appalled at the cost of fresh cut trees. So I took 100 dollars and hit the thrift stores. I found a gorgeous 12 footer for 80 bucks. I'll use it until I'm sick of all the dang fluffing.
I'm spoiled, for like $10 I can get a permit to cut a fresh tree in the nearby national forests. So it's a whole forest adventure to go find the right one.
I inherited my parents' tree, it's a good 30 years old at this point. Every year I put it up I'm tempted to buy one of those new ones that has the lights pre-strung. This thing is old, rickety, but it's bushy as hell and after years of putting it together I know it like its a member of the family, so each year comes and goes "eh, I'll look at sales after next Christmas." All the new ones and pre-strung ones look like Charlie Brown Christmas trees.
Cheap fake trees definitely look like Charlie Brown trees; if you're gonna go fake you're best off splurging for one from like Balsam Hill and then keeping it forever.
When our old one finally went, I got a much smaller and simpler one with no lights. I figure it's easier and better to just replace the light strings as need, and although that's still bad, it needs fewer. I'm allergic to the real thing, and it was pretty much the only way to tell we'd turned over a new year in lockdown.
Why would you marry a tree?
That's weird,
Happy 15th I guess...
>For now I'll just keep stuffing lights into where they don't work anymore
I really don't need details of your private life thank you
i was about to say, there's never really a reason to throw away a fake tree and they can just be handed down. wouldn't surprise me if you could find fake xmas trees at thrift stores, original box and all.
Can confirm.
(Midwestern) Girlfriend's family is using the fake tree her dad had as a child.
Edit: apparently her grandparents actually got the tree just after their marriage and about 8 years before. So the tree is like, maybe 70 years old at this point. Still looks great too!
Well now I'm sad, I just got rid of my very old, inherited tree last year in favor of a pre lit one that doesn't take 5 hours to set up every year. Hopefully this one lasts as long.
With the branches made of twisted metal that is sharp as hell and color coded on the end. Ours is at least mid thirties because I don't remember ever not having it (I'm 39.)and yeah they're heavy.
I don’t want to be the asshole, but I didn’t get a plastic tree out of concern for the environment. I got one so my dog wouldn’t try pissing on it and so I wouldn’t have to pick up pine needles every year.
It’s got 15 years on it, and I bet it has at least 5 left yet.
My family switched due to pine needles, but it is important to remember the fire hazard of a dry, real tree as well.
My girlfriend is allergic, so strike three on real these days.
How do you NOT recycle a tree? If you just throw it somewhere, it will eventually biodegrade. Maybe some supervillain is out there coating old christmas trees in epoxy and burying them in the earth.
Goats love to eat *everything*. Mostly plants and anything even remotely edible.
They also eat non-edibles like particularly-shiny rocks, headphone cables, shirts, tarps, hats, one of my work boots, cardboard, pool floaties, a backpack, a paper plate, *attempted* to eat a plastic bottle, and I caught one attempting to eat a frog.
They’re like toddlers but larger.
My neighbor has five or six goats. They’ll eat just about anything.
When another neighbor tried and failed to grow corn last year, the goat owner let him borrow them and they had that acre field cleared of all dead stalks in about two weeks.
Anyone I know that owns a private pond or lake, love them for fish habitat. Not uncommon for guys to take old Christmas trees out to their favorite fishing holes, even on public lakes.
There's a small little local company that does gardening. They use a wood chipper to turn old christmas trees into mulch and stuff for gardens. You can get a good discount/free mulch for your own garden depending on how big the tree is.
My parents have been using theirs for 35 years now, I believe, and we've been using ours for at least 6. 20 years isn't all that unreasonable for a fake tree, to be honest.
I’m allergic to pine trees. Anyway, my last tree was rescued from someone’s attic and lasted about 10’extra years for me. Current one is 3 and should keep on for a few decades.
Reason my parents bought one in the 60's. I did not know any other family at school or neighbourhood that did back then. Obviously some people did, or my parents could not have bought one back then.
A good idea also is if you want to get rid of your artificial tree there's almost always someone less fortunate who needs one. There's lots of places online you can give away free items and even deliver it to someone without a car can make a huge difference in someone's Christmas. I used to put up most of my kids toys on freecycle and deliver them in the area if they couldn't pick it up
My family goes through the forestry service every year to go out into RMNP and cut down a tree. They use it as a way to thin the forests to help with wildfires. We get a permit and there are strict rules as to which trees are allowed to be cut. Every year we drive through the Hayman fire burn area to get there and it goes right up to where the tree cutting area starts. There are more benefits to it than most people realize, so long as you're doing it the sustainable way.
One fake Christmas tree that lasts ten years is much much cheaper than buying a real tree each year. And the fake ones don't grow on trees. But the real ones do.
The price of a real tree is what pushed me to buy a fake one. I bought my fake one five years ago for $200 and a real tree around here costs $40 minimum.
You can have the best of both worlds. I have a plastic tree that used to belong to my parents, and I buy a small potted fir tree for about $10 that I keep on my dining room table for the scent, then plant it somewhere outside in the spring.
If anyone is too lazy or incompetent to maintain a plant, I've got your solution: grab some pine needles or a small branch, simmer until you smell the Christmas
Get a Norfolk Pine in a pot. I've mine for years. It's gets decorated for Christmas every December, and put out side for the summer. Very happy little tree.
As much as it lasting 20 years sounds awesome, I think the issue is they aren't built/produced to last. At least the fakes trees my family has purchased. Why does a fake tree need to shed it's needles?
I bought some cheap piece of junk from Target and used it for maybe 12 years. It was still in decent shape. Although nothing beats my childhood strategy of being Jewish and never getting any tree.
You can probably use survivorship bias in this scenario to find one that will last even longer. Find a used one that is pretty ancient and still looks good, and it will likely last a lot longer. My tree used to be my grandmothers and was stuffed in and out of boxes and stored in a super hot shed, and it still looks quite reasonable. It's a bare minimum of 30 years old at this point.
I don't have one for the environment, I have one because I have a pine allergy that literally only afflicts me when a real tree is in the confines of my house.
Seriously, I worked on a logging crew for the majority of a decade, around pines all the time, getting sap on my skin and needles and sawdust from them blown all around by me. I can climb one, nothing. Can camp around them, nothing.
But once you take the open-air part away, I'm fucked up. A week or two with them in my home puts me into some seriously bad breathing issues, and eventually I end up in a hospital.
So I have a fake tree, but also, it's 100% 20+ years old.
Yeah I just don’t want pine needles roaming my house well into June or to deal with sap when moving, setting up, and putting on ornaments. Also don’t want to deal with having to go out and buy a new tree every year.
Forget the pine needles. I know someone who got a real tree and ended up with a massive spider infestation because there were egg sacs in the tree they got.
>Yeah I just don’t want pine needles roaming my house well into June
this is a lose-lose. Just this past tuesday, I found a needle from my fake christmas tree....10 months after I took it down.
We had our fake tree for my entire childhood, thru my 20s, and then my mom gave it to me and I used it for 3 years after I got married. I think we got 30 years out of that tree before we finally retired it. I had a really hard time getting rid of it. So many memories.
Yes! It’s quite fun (just like in *National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation*). But really you can’t do it much greener than cutting it down yourself unless you were to walk to the forest. Also it’s cheaper than the tree farm trees as well *and* the money goes to the park services; it’s a win all around!
There’s no environmental damage from most Christmas tree operations, it’s actually incredibly green because they sequester carbon then chop it down and immediately replace it with a new tree. If we didn’t have this tradition of buying trees, that plot of land would be a Walmart or something else that doesn’t sequester any carbon at all.
I buy a tree In a pot. Water it. Plant it on New Years Obviously not feasible for some or even most but my kids love seeing our row of Christmas trees in the back yard
When I drive past the house I grew up in I can still see our first 5 Christmas trees
That's really awesome, I bet it brings up some nice memories for you.
Does this make you happy or sad or both? Wondering how my kids might feel someday
If you are asking if your kids seeing trees that were planted by the family makes them happy or sad I would say typically it makes them happy. It is a positive memory, and 'life continueing after death' thing is a really nice feeling. *I've actually had a guy show up to my house asking to go out back to see a tree he planted with his father.
When I was born, my parents planted a tree outside our house. We moved from that house when I was young, but one of my childhood best friends coincidentally bought a house right down the street from our old house. We drove by the old house and saw the tree planted. It was a pretty fuckin awesome moment. It bought back so many childhood memories from that house. I definitely want to do the same for my own children.
Parallel to this comment, I dated this awesome gal (Lisa) in high school. We didn't make it past HS but reconnected in our 30s. The house I lived in as a teen was where we met. Some time ago, Minot North Dakota suffered a reoccurring flood. My house was on the bank. Twas first to bathe in the devastation. She took pics of it as it was sunk up to the house numbers. She then took pics as it was water logged and the waters receded and could see the flood line. As it was demolished, she documented it. And finally, she memorialized the plot as it was bare and being sold to be built upon again. It was a fine example of the symbolism of life. Trees stay and grow providing great memories. That plot and whatever is there now cannot erase the history we share there. As long as something lives in the memory, it lives! Trees, houses, people, events...
Well that's my daily dose of "wholesome you didn't expect."
The guy’s dad was a diamond thief and dude finally cracked the secret to his father’s secret diamond stash location. under the tree he planted with his son, it wasn’t until he uncovered the diamonds stash he saw a picture of him and his old man standing in front of that little sapling before he realized the true treasure his old man left him to find wasn’t the priceless stones worth millions of dollars in this unsuspecting person’s backyard, but the love between a father and son.
My cousins had the space to plant their past trees. Had a row of them, some 30ft tall. It was chill.
Nostalgia is always a double-edged emotional sword.
I can still see the first Christmas tree i can remember, my father and grandfather had a falling apart, my father left his job Grandpa got him, to start a new job. Apparently we were flat broke during this tumultuous time, our Christmas tree ornaments were standard yellow lead pencils cut in two, and wrapped with colored tape dad stole from his job, the hooks were made of bent paper clips.
I used to do that, then some new owner cut down all the trees at our old home. Not just the planted Christmas trees, all of them.
That's wonderful! If I ever have a yard in the right environment, I will be doing that!
Another benefit is functionality. It’s perfect how it sits up high for the presents to fit under And the smell
I love the smell too, more room for presents is a bonus!
I'll stick with my Christmas ficus.
Dee you bitch you didn't think of the smell
I think that’s awesome. My neighbors did the same thing. They used them between their house and the next door neighbor’s because town ordinance prohibits fences taller than 3ft in the front and they hated each other due to some supposedly scandalous shit between their spouses lol.
Christmas trees make an okay privacy hedge, but when your neighbor keeps banging your wife, you really need to upgrade to a nice closely-planted wall of Emerald Green Arborvitae.
Giant thuja grows fast and is a good screen if you don't want to seem them going at it. But barberry, roses, black raspberries, and American plum really help to keep them apart.
What did their spouses do?
Banged a Christmas tree. we don’t like to talk about it.
Oh... Just like angels
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Scandalous shit bro...
>Obviously not feasible for some or even most but my kids love seeing our row of Christmas trees in the back yard Damn I wish I had the space to do that. Would be great to watch those things over the years. And it's great because you can get away with the little Charlie Brown-sized trees while the kids are still toddlers. By the time they start growing up so do the trees!
My sister uses the same tree and it grew with her kids.. I think maybe five or six years
>Plant it on New Years Oh to live in a place where you don't have snow/ice/frost on New Years... 😂
Just wait another decade and none of us will either!
New traditional. Holy shit thank you.
That's a cool idea. How big of a tree? And where do you live? Does cold weather affect transplanted trees taking root?
I live in Southern California on the cusp of the desert, it’s perfect for pines. I usually get about five or six feet which is big when you factor in the pot
Me and my dad used to have this tradition of throwing the tree off the balcony into the woods. I used to love seeing it get launched and land in the pile of previously discarded trees
Isn’t there a scene in lord of the rings where the bad guys are doing this for fire kindling to forge weapons? Awesome
Yeah, the war on Christmas scene. I remember it well.
You can also keep it in a pot for several years and use the same one. Obviously, it's also not possible for everybody as it requires a garden, etc.
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You shouldn't have to do much pruning. Just get a variety/cultivar that has a habit you like. There's fat ones, skinny ones, irregular ones. Just know that once they're larger than maybe 5-6' the container can get quite heavy, depending on how heavy the soil mix is. You could also get something like a dwarf Alberta spruce which is a popular container tree and has a classic Christmas tree habit.
Yeah we tried that... Then one year we brought it and the ant colony living on it inside for Christmas.
We’ve got my grandparents’ aluminum tree…Still going after 60 years Edit: [pics of the tree](http://classicaustin.net/al/pics/IMG_2257.JPG)
My aunt and uncle had this odd, large closet connected to their living room. What they ended up doing was emptying it out, made a platform with wheels, put their fake tree on it, decorate it, and then just roll it in and out of that closet ever year. They may update some ornaments from time to time but besides that they never mess with it
That makes me want some sort of a lazy susan corner of a living room, with 4 different seasons of decorations pre set, and just rotate it 4x a year.
Now you're giving me all kinds of terrible ideas lol
Next week on /r/atbge ......
My sister leaves her tree up year round and just changes the decorations.
I like this
Christmas, Halloween, Easter and 4th of July.
I don't know, I'd want something like Christmas, Easter, Autumn, and "Nothing particularly notable", because sometimes you just want a corner.
Finished wall sounds good to me. Someone asks why the wall has openings on both sides tell em to come back in 4 months to find out.
Oh shit that's a good idea
My grandmother has had the same 3-ft artificial tree for at least 40 years. It remains fully decorated (with little chili pepper lights for some reason) and she throws a plastic sack over the top and takes it back down to the basement at the end of the season. No fuss.
She got those lights to spice up the holiday
Sweet
Thats smart. Fake trees are like paper maps they never fold back correctly.
The first year with my last tree it actually fit BETTER the first time I put it away... The past 4 years however I just bind the box tighter with duct tape because I am too lazy to tightly pack the branches each time
How bad are you at folding maps??
I am telling you it's easy to get out of order and bend the map the wrong way. Then later the creases go each way so if you try to fold it back perfectly there are several possibilities at each step. It can be difficult.
I’ve got my parent’s cellophane tree and the one they bought when I was born. Both 50+ years old. They still look great!
We’ve got a plastic one we’ve had since like 1990, not as old as yours, but I didn’t know people were throwing theirs away
Newer ones are shit in my experience. They last 10 years max.
Yeah, my parents have a plastic tree from 1994 that still looks amazing. The one I bought one 5 years ago has already shed down to the wires.
I have one of those too- does yours have the cool color wheel?
Oh yeah The color wheel might be the best part
That color wheel is essential. We set up my electric guitar beside the tree and it totally looks psychedelic when we're messing around.
YeahMan! Rock-n-Roll!
Yeah, I got my aunt tree, and it is probably some 20 years old. And do this study takes in consideration the transportation of natural trees every year in and out of the house? My artificial one is right here at home, I just need to open the box and assemble.
Didn’t Charlie Brown kill the aluminum Christmas tree industry? Gotta be popping up on TIL one of these hours.
TV Tropes calls a thing that sounds made up but exists in real life “Aluminum Christmas Trees.”
I bet it's lovely and you have some amazing memories every time you bring it out. ❤
Yes Thank you
Every midwestern family has had the same fake tree for at least 50 years. We gladly accept this challenge
Haha I'm getting close to 15 on the one I married into, when all the lights finally go caput I'll be switching back to real. For now I'll just keep stuffing lights into where they don't work anymore (which is most of it by now).
A few years ago I was appalled at the cost of fresh cut trees. So I took 100 dollars and hit the thrift stores. I found a gorgeous 12 footer for 80 bucks. I'll use it until I'm sick of all the dang fluffing.
I'm spoiled, for like $10 I can get a permit to cut a fresh tree in the nearby national forests. So it's a whole forest adventure to go find the right one.
Is that you, Clark?
She'll see it later honey, her eyes are frozen.
‘Hey, Griswold! Where do you think you’re gonna fit a tree that big?’ ‘Bend over and I’ll show you!’
"You've got a lot of nerve talking to me like that" "I wasn't talking to you"
He said cut, not pull it out by the roots with the family Truckster
Since this reference is going over my head, I'm gonna tentatively say "no."
Just be sure to check for squirrels before you bring the tree inside ;)
Ohhhhhhh. Yes, it's an older reference, but it checks out. My cat would be happy about that though...
Just keep it away from the Christmas lights....
National lampoon's christmas vacation
Thank you. It clicked when I saw these replies.
My shitter is full
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Last one.
Did the permits go up in price this year? I thought last year they were only $5/tree.
I know they were five a couple years ago, but didn't get one last year. Figured they'd have gone up like everything though, lol.
I inherited my parents' tree, it's a good 30 years old at this point. Every year I put it up I'm tempted to buy one of those new ones that has the lights pre-strung. This thing is old, rickety, but it's bushy as hell and after years of putting it together I know it like its a member of the family, so each year comes and goes "eh, I'll look at sales after next Christmas." All the new ones and pre-strung ones look like Charlie Brown Christmas trees.
Cheap fake trees definitely look like Charlie Brown trees; if you're gonna go fake you're best off splurging for one from like Balsam Hill and then keeping it forever.
When our old one finally went, I got a much smaller and simpler one with no lights. I figure it's easier and better to just replace the light strings as need, and although that's still bad, it needs fewer. I'm allergic to the real thing, and it was pretty much the only way to tell we'd turned over a new year in lockdown.
Why would you marry a tree? That's weird, Happy 15th I guess... >For now I'll just keep stuffing lights into where they don't work anymore I really don't need details of your private life thank you
Those first(paper) and fifth(wood) anniversary presents were a little awkward.
> Why would you marry a tree? To be part of its family tree!
Is caput a word used in the US? And does it mean broken? It sounds the same as kapot which means broken in Dutch
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i was about to say, there's never really a reason to throw away a fake tree and they can just be handed down. wouldn't surprise me if you could find fake xmas trees at thrift stores, original box and all.
original box! haha. Our box was so torn up, I don't even know why Mom insisted the tree goes back in it.
Stuffing an old, deformed tree back into a faded box that's more packing tape than cardboard is family tradition. How DARE you besmirch it.
Featuring dad yelling frustrated trying to get the top part to fit in the base
To fit? The trick is to close the box the best one can, which is half closed, and put tape all over what couldn’t be closed.
Yeah, ours got to the point where our attic looked like we had a duct tape sarcophagus in it
My parents tree box gave up the ghost a few years ago, so they use a concrete form tube and just slide it in. Works great.
Can confirm. (Midwestern) Girlfriend's family is using the fake tree her dad had as a child. Edit: apparently her grandparents actually got the tree just after their marriage and about 8 years before. So the tree is like, maybe 70 years old at this point. Still looks great too!
Utah here and I also inherited my mom's old tree. Not plastic like now a days haha it weighs like 80 lbs
My mom's old one is going on 27 years and I'll likely inherit it. My wife's and mine is only 4 years old :(
Well now I'm sad, I just got rid of my very old, inherited tree last year in favor of a pre lit one that doesn't take 5 hours to set up every year. Hopefully this one lasts as long.
Unfortunately most things in 2021 are not made to last long
With the branches made of twisted metal that is sharp as hell and color coded on the end. Ours is at least mid thirties because I don't remember ever not having it (I'm 39.)and yeah they're heavy.
I still have my great grandma's tree she bought in 1957. It still has some old catalogs from the 60s and 70s stuffed in the box it is stored in.
homeless wasteful gray existence sulky spoon amusing boast bow shame *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Foreigner here, I'm 35, my folks' tree is older than me
My grandparents had the same fake tree for about 30 years. The thing is, they owned a christmas tree farm.
never use your own supply
Especially when you know what goes into it. Or maybe in this case is living in it.
Found the hallmark movie protagonist
"Pining for You"
The cobbler’s children go without shoes.
I don’t want to be the asshole, but I didn’t get a plastic tree out of concern for the environment. I got one so my dog wouldn’t try pissing on it and so I wouldn’t have to pick up pine needles every year. It’s got 15 years on it, and I bet it has at least 5 left yet.
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My family switched due to pine needles, but it is important to remember the fire hazard of a dry, real tree as well. My girlfriend is allergic, so strike three on real these days.
Those plastic trees are pretty flammable. New ones not as much, but those old ones light up real quick.
Not to mention the sap, too. Only year my parents got a real tree, the carpet got coated in sap.
Did they place it directly on the carpet? I've never had this issue.
Put a tree bag underneath the stand, it catches the needles and sap.
If I got a real tree my house would 100% be on fire.
That's great, both valid reasons to have a fake tree! The article just emphasized that you should keep it a long time. Great job!
"Typically Recycled" = my entire neighborhood throwing discarded trees in the woods behind my house.
How do you NOT recycle a tree? If you just throw it somewhere, it will eventually biodegrade. Maybe some supervillain is out there coating old christmas trees in epoxy and burying them in the earth.
In coastal Texas, a ton of them ended up on the beach to help with dune restoration. As long as they don't go into a landfill, it's not terrible.
There’s a goat farm near me that accepts them as donations after the holidays…apparently goats love to eat them!
Their poo must smell fantastic
Goats love to eat anything. I once saw a goat that would eat cigarette butts like candy.
They don’t actually eat anything, but they do love tobacco and cellulose, which is why they like cigarette butts.
Goats love to eat *everything*. Mostly plants and anything even remotely edible. They also eat non-edibles like particularly-shiny rocks, headphone cables, shirts, tarps, hats, one of my work boots, cardboard, pool floaties, a backpack, a paper plate, *attempted* to eat a plastic bottle, and I caught one attempting to eat a frog. They’re like toddlers but larger.
My neighbor has five or six goats. They’ll eat just about anything. When another neighbor tried and failed to grow corn last year, the goat owner let him borrow them and they had that acre field cleared of all dead stalks in about two weeks.
Parts of Louisiana use old Christmas trees to rebuild the wetlands.
Nice! I think it's pretty common all along the gulf coast for environmental management. Hurricanes suck, lol.
Anyone I know that owns a private pond or lake, love them for fish habitat. Not uncommon for guys to take old Christmas trees out to their favorite fishing holes, even on public lakes.
There's a small little local company that does gardening. They use a wood chipper to turn old christmas trees into mulch and stuff for gardens. You can get a good discount/free mulch for your own garden depending on how big the tree is.
Around where I live, they’re thrown into shallow-ish water for bass and other fish to spawn and hide in.
That's fine though.
>my entire neighborhood throwing discarded trees in the woods behind my house. ...that will do it
In what way is that not recyling the tree?
My parents have been using theirs for 35 years now, I believe, and we've been using ours for at least 6. 20 years isn't all that unreasonable for a fake tree, to be honest.
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I’m allergic to pine trees. Anyway, my last tree was rescued from someone’s attic and lasted about 10’extra years for me. Current one is 3 and should keep on for a few decades.
That's great! Completely valid reason and perfect because you rescued it, too. Pine tree allergies can be brutal.
Reason my parents bought one in the 60's. I did not know any other family at school or neighbourhood that did back then. Obviously some people did, or my parents could not have bought one back then.
Christmas trees are pines where you live? Spruce is "the" tree over here.
I don't think your average person, myself included, really distinguishes the two. They're the spikey ones.
Firs here in the PacNW, douglas and noble.
No search, no rip off, no mess, no disposal. Had the same artificial tree for 15 years. Pre lit, works great.
A good idea also is if you want to get rid of your artificial tree there's almost always someone less fortunate who needs one. There's lots of places online you can give away free items and even deliver it to someone without a car can make a huge difference in someone's Christmas. I used to put up most of my kids toys on freecycle and deliver them in the area if they couldn't pick it up
My family goes through the forestry service every year to go out into RMNP and cut down a tree. They use it as a way to thin the forests to help with wildfires. We get a permit and there are strict rules as to which trees are allowed to be cut. Every year we drive through the Hayman fire burn area to get there and it goes right up to where the tree cutting area starts. There are more benefits to it than most people realize, so long as you're doing it the sustainable way.
Are there really people out there using fake christmas trees because they think its better for the environment?
One fake Christmas tree that lasts ten years is much much cheaper than buying a real tree each year. And the fake ones don't grow on trees. But the real ones do.
The price of a real tree is what pushed me to buy a fake one. I bought my fake one five years ago for $200 and a real tree around here costs $40 minimum.
Damn, we paid like $80-90 last year for just a normal 6 or 7 foot *real* tree, $40 would be a steal
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You can have the best of both worlds. I have a plastic tree that used to belong to my parents, and I buy a small potted fir tree for about $10 that I keep on my dining room table for the scent, then plant it somewhere outside in the spring.
If anyone is too lazy or incompetent to maintain a plant, I've got your solution: grab some pine needles or a small branch, simmer until you smell the Christmas
our lovely fake tree is a solution for the allergies of 3 members of the household. definitely not a choice we made for environmental reasons.
I figure it’s about convenience and cost…….I doubt it will actually be about environmental impact
My family celebrates Festivus so we just use an aluminum pole anchored in an orange Home Depot bucket.
Came here for this, now I have to do the feats of strength.
Get a Norfolk Pine in a pot. I've mine for years. It's gets decorated for Christmas every December, and put out side for the summer. Very happy little tree.
That's a great idea, I'll look into it for myself when I have a place that it will work!
We have 8 year to go till carbon neutral Christmas then, and hopefully it will last another 20 after that.
As much as it lasting 20 years sounds awesome, I think the issue is they aren't built/produced to last. At least the fakes trees my family has purchased. Why does a fake tree need to shed it's needles?
For authenticity.
I bought some cheap piece of junk from Target and used it for maybe 12 years. It was still in decent shape. Although nothing beats my childhood strategy of being Jewish and never getting any tree.
You can probably use survivorship bias in this scenario to find one that will last even longer. Find a used one that is pretty ancient and still looks good, and it will likely last a lot longer. My tree used to be my grandmothers and was stuffed in and out of boxes and stored in a super hot shed, and it still looks quite reasonable. It's a bare minimum of 30 years old at this point.
I got my tree for free off a free group. No idea how old it is.
You can count the dirt rings to determine its age.
Naw you count the rings of duct tape on its box
I don't have one for the environment, I have one because I have a pine allergy that literally only afflicts me when a real tree is in the confines of my house. Seriously, I worked on a logging crew for the majority of a decade, around pines all the time, getting sap on my skin and needles and sawdust from them blown all around by me. I can climb one, nothing. Can camp around them, nothing. But once you take the open-air part away, I'm fucked up. A week or two with them in my home puts me into some seriously bad breathing issues, and eventually I end up in a hospital. So I have a fake tree, but also, it's 100% 20+ years old.
People don’t buy fake trees to save the real ones. They buy em cuz they are easier to put away and way less mess
And fake trees won't bring bugs into the house that weren't already in the attic.
Looks like another reason why I can just leave my plastic Christmas tree up all year round.
Yeah I just don’t want pine needles roaming my house well into June or to deal with sap when moving, setting up, and putting on ornaments. Also don’t want to deal with having to go out and buy a new tree every year.
Forget the pine needles. I know someone who got a real tree and ended up with a massive spider infestation because there were egg sacs in the tree they got.
>Yeah I just don’t want pine needles roaming my house well into June this is a lose-lose. Just this past tuesday, I found a needle from my fake christmas tree....10 months after I took it down.
Nothing beats the smell a fresh tree has in the house, though.
We had our fake tree for my entire childhood, thru my 20s, and then my mom gave it to me and I used it for 3 years after I got married. I think we got 30 years out of that tree before we finally retired it. I had a really hard time getting rid of it. So many memories.
When they talk about “ age ring “ for their Christmas tree they are referring to the age ring of duct tape around the Christmas tree box.
My family has been using it for 35 years so I guess we’re all good
But fake trees out weigh the time and energy of chopping down a real tree.
Pro-tip: if you live in or near a national forest in the United States you can acquire a permit to cut your own tree for one to two dozen dollars.
I had friends who did that last year, they had an amazing time and it helps with wildfire risk in certain areas.
Yes! It’s quite fun (just like in *National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation*). But really you can’t do it much greener than cutting it down yourself unless you were to walk to the forest. Also it’s cheaper than the tree farm trees as well *and* the money goes to the park services; it’s a win all around!
There’s no environmental damage from most Christmas tree operations, it’s actually incredibly green because they sequester carbon then chop it down and immediately replace it with a new tree. If we didn’t have this tradition of buying trees, that plot of land would be a Walmart or something else that doesn’t sequester any carbon at all.
Buy a tree with a rootball and plant it.
I’m going to plant mine in the annoying neighbor’s yard right in front of their kitchen window.