Back when we got a real tree there was a point we were living in a great old Edwardian house with ceilings over ten feet tall. The kids went out to cut a tree and, of course, got one ten feet tall.

The problem was that as trees get taller they get wider. It was a crowded Christmas.

Grew up with the grand and huge tree during the holidays; always a source of warm memories. As an adult; I like trees and whether farmed or not (and I've never seen a tree that didn't seem to belong exactly where it was in the wild), no way on the decapitated tree inside my home.

I did however; plant a Christmas tree in my front yard. Or so the neighbors call it.

Fake! We have a 3-yo prelit that no longer lights up. I like the smell of a real tree, but I like putting up my tree too early (ideally lit tree on Nov 1 and ornaments on Thanksgiving) to do a real one.

TPS, we are lucky enough to have cedar and juniper trees so we trim some off and leave it in a basket for the tree scent.

I keep meaning to buy some. Will put it on my shopping list!

Over the years progressed from real to fake which tries to look real to fake which isn't even green.

Team Fake!

fake here too and only 4.5 ft tall because I refuse to get on a step stool to decorate the tree. been there, done that when I took over tree light duties growing up.

We went fake several years ago. We just got tired of dealing with real trees...picking them out, hauling them home, keeping them watered, vacuuming the endless dropped needles, then hauling them...somewhere...for disposal.

Fake, and white prelit, currently. Sometimes we switch it out - one year we had a super thin black one, as we had very little room.

Always fake. We never had a real tree when I was a kid. We had this pathetic little 3ft tall white tinsel tree that got more and more sparse each year as bits fell off it.

When they first came out, I had a fibre optic tree that I got from QVC. It was nice, but not quite tall enough to justify its footprint in the living room. So I decided to get a taller one.

Now I have a 6ft artificial tree that lives all folded up in a box for the rest of the year. It's coming out at the weekend. I'm hosting my Book Club on Monday to discuss our Christmas book, so I want everything to be done by then, lights outside and everything. Because the tree goes in a corner, I only really decorate 2/3rds of it.

This year I bought an awesome tree skirt on Black Friday, reduced from £37.99 to £9.99. I can't wait to get the tree up to try it out.

Real real real.

1. The smell
2. The ritual and fuss and bother
3. The quirkiness & different character year to year
4. It is a way to support farmers in our region who use trees as a winter crop and as 'bait' for farmstand visitors who then buy other things
5. Real trees have a much lower carbon footprint as long as they are not landfilled - fake are not recyclable
6. They are chipped by our city and used for mulch
7. Christmas tree farms preserve open lands, provide wildlife habitat and help rural economies
8. Christmas tree lots are works of art, with their light strings and greenery and red balers
9. Christmas tree lots are good fundraisers for community organizations