fake trees - naff or necessary?

[codswallop]

well?

we actually have both normally, our fake one goes at the bottom of the stairs, and the real one goes in the conserv as there is more room in there, but this year its the fake one I'm afraid, dont really want pine needles about when I drop No.2

fake. it looks fake but it looks good and cost only £7 xmas isn't about being pretentious

Have one of each. Its not a time for making decisions!

fake for me too. i remember only too well the real one we had when i was about 8 (last one we ever had i think) and remember picking the needles out of the carpet for weeks afterwards! ds is a clumsy nightmare at the best of times and i can really see him injuring himself on a real one! plus baby crawling and picking needles up, cats batting at it...ooh no thanks. i dont like the fake tinsely type ones though with hardly any branches, and no fibre optic or pre decorated either. ours is a little short bushy tree thats usually wrecked by the time we take it down but fun to decorate.

my fake tree is over 20 years old and is decorated with things the children have made and multi-coloured baubles/ tinsel because that's the way they like it. Some people will see that that as naff - but I care for my children more than for the opinions of style gurus.

Fake, and it looks fabulous, especially when Moomina Llewellyn Bowen gets her baubles out.

I used to share a flat in London where the pine needles had never been hoovered up from a real tree years before and were therefore embedded deep into the carpet. Walking barefoot anywhere in that place was purgatory.

happymerryberries, as I said, it is not really an issue to me, so when dp said that he had some hippy veggie problem with real trees I just went with it. I think he doesn't like the idea of the trees being grown all that time just to be chopped down. I really don't know why. He is extremely persuasive (philosophy degree) so I couldn't be bothered to argue. After all, it saves the hassle of going out & getting one each year, and it would be my job as he doesn't get all that excited about Xmas (not being a Christian and all!)

aah, i love real trees. Have never had a prob vis-a-vis trees and the babies, i think they would try to knock it over/grab baubles off it whatever.
In previous years have bought non-needle drop but they are £30!! outrageous. "traditional" one is only a tenner and better shape, smell etc so i think that's what we'll go for this year.
Have a real holly wreath as well, is that eco-unfriendly too??

well coddy, your right. we have a fake white tree. i think its very tacky and tbh its looking very battered now, so this is the last year we will use it. next year we will have a real tree.

has to be real!
dislike the fake ones......
We do have wooden floors which makes vaccuuming the needles a whole lot easier
mmmmmm love the smell

Tatt, I can't imagine that anyone would think having your childrens' home made ornamants on the tree would be naff.

SantaClary, do you really think 30 pounds is expensive for a tree? Mine cost $80 this year (about 50 pounds). Gulp. A fake one would definitely be cheaper in the long run!

I love real trees but a few years ago I found one of those aluminum trees (remember the 60's?) and just had to have it. Now I want to put up a real one too but dh is putting his foot down at one tree. We have a good friend who owns a Christmas tree farm so I don't feel guilty about the real tree, assuming I overcome dh on this one!

Fake here.....with prelit lights.....8 way combination lighting feature..and as I stopped dp having a fiber optic number (just tooooo naff for me...) he's decided the tree will be covered (and I mean covered( in (shatterproof) baubles.......(bloody thing has to go back 'cos a branch is broken...

...and necessary in my view - I'm not hoovering up the pine needles, getting rid of the damn thing, keeping ds away from it....

I've got a plastic one. Got it in Oxfam, Reckon it dates back to the fifties. Smells a bit musty, even though I washed it. Its ok.

We have a real one as well. and several fakes.

big, needle dropping real one downstairs and fab naff, sparkly one in dd1's room

I love going out choosing a real one - tend to make dh stand holding them all until I find the right one, as it has to be bushy and balanced!
Never had a fake one, but going on my grandmothers very old green tatty one, if I had to have one would go with the non-green ones.

kate i just thought £30 was dear compared to a better shape traditional one for about £10 last year! We don't have a very big one (about 4-5 ft) and a non-needle drop at that size is soooo big at the bottom and then not much elsewhere (ho ho bit like me). The needle-drop ones are a much better shape. And I just couldn't believe I was payign three times as much for a less nice tree IYSWIM.
I assume your $80 one is ENORMOUS! (I've seen the movies, everyone in America lives in a huge house and has a 10ft tree)

Ours is a nice fake one. I do like 'real' trees but I agree that they are just not practical when you have a young family and pets.

SC, It's 8 feet, but the ceiling is 10 feet, so it does look a bit small!

We've got a fake one because our ds is 9 months old, and he's got a habit of putting everything in his mouth at the moment! I can just imagine him crawling up to me with a mouth full of pine needles....! Ouch! But as for real trees, when he's a bit older, I think we'll probably have one!

Always have real trees and usually the hunt for the very tall and bushy type - smell is wonderful. DD is on the move now and its her first christmas so I attempted to experiment with a mini fake tree it looked too naff to even warrant decorating. It's in a bin bag I haven't yet decided if I'll throw it out, donate it to someone or bung it in the loft. In its place is a gorgeous mini pot grown REAL tree which will go out in a shady corner of the garden and be brought in again next year. To accompany it the mini pot grown REAL tree, bought last year, has been brought in from the cold to take its place in the hall. I am greedy always have two trees and they both look fab and if I don't kill them it's a very eco-friendly way to have real, childproof trees

A friend was telling me about an article in The Observer (I've googled and can't find it, unfortunately). The gist of it was that real trees are actually more environmentally friendly/PC than fake ones. Real ones only take 2 years to grow, making them easily sustainable (almost recyclable!). And they take in carbon dioxide and give out oxygen. Fake ones are made using non-environmentally friendly plastics and chemicals - all of which create pollution in their manufacture. Plus, they are often made in sweatshops in the third world, by an underpaid and exploited workforce. The article concluded that even if you bought one artificial tree and used it for a lifetime, it would still have caused more damage to the environment than if you bought a real one every year!

Wish I could find the article - would show it to dh