I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends. I spent it with my husband and son at home with another family that has become very dear to us. The house was fill with sounds of laughter and kids running all over, with smells of a roasting feast, and smiles to be seen all around.
If you are like most people who I know, then the fall décor has been taken down and put away. Now the winter and Christmas stuff comes out! Nativity displays, reindeer and elves, glittery candles, poinsettia plants, and Christmas trees. Growing up, our Christmas tree was the centerpiece of our holiday decorations. We would spend a whole day at a local tree farm and hike up and down hills searching for the perfect tree, which was usually the fattest and fullest we could find. The tree would take up an entire corner in our family room and fill the house with the scent of pine and spruce. My sister and I would decorate it with boxes and boxes of lights, cover every branch with ornaments and tinsel, and of course garland. By time we were finished decorating the tree, barely any green showed through the layers of ornaments, garland and tinsel.
It wasn’t until I met my husband that I realized that some families have always used fake trees. I was floored when we spent our first Christmas together and I said it was time to get our Christmas tree. He came out of the storage room with a box containing a fake tree and I was standing at the door with the car keys and dress for a winter hike. Haahaahaa! Needless to say, we ended up with a real tree. To me, the fake tree seemed just that – fake. There was no piney smell, no prickly needles, no connection to nature, no payoff for the hike and dragging a tree out of the woods.
Still, fake trees now are not what they used to be. They are much more realistic and even come with the bulbs already on them. Some even come already decorated, for those that just don’t have the time to spend on it. From what I hear, you can even get them scented to smell like a real tree! No needles to clean up all of the time or remembering to water a real tree. You could even see it as saving the environment because you aren’t chopping down a perfectly good tree. I suppose the only down side of a fake tree is the space in storage.
So, what kind of house are you? Are you a real tree house or a fake tree house?