Real tree or not, does it depend on your childhood?

Except for a few years when the only option was the fakest-of-fakes in my previous post, we’ve always had real trees.
A cut one in the sitting room, a small potted one outside the front door. That usually lasts 2-3 years until it’s either too big or looking too sad. Unfortunately there’s no room in our small garden to plant it out.

Always a real one, from childhood onwards.
I hate plastic imitations, however realistic.
My children insist on real ones, although i don't think their partners are thrilled.

We've had both. Real as a child, real & artificial as an adult. Real, of late. Much to the delight of my moggies.

That’s interesting @MawB - and the fact that they were referred to as ‘Yule vacations’ would indicate that it was seen as a largely pagan festival in 1640.

Though IMO it always has been, the merging of the old Midwinter Day jollifications with the Christian festival. It’s still called Yule (Jul) in Sweden.

I suspect that this is why Christmas still tends to be a bigger thing in Northern European countries, where they were in greater need of Midwinter jollifications, than in warmer, more Southern European ditto.

When I was little we always had a real tree and my dad would bring it home 3/4 days before xmas from the market along with a massive turkey which mum had to pluck and stuff.
Over the years when ACs where at home we always had a real tree in family room and artificial one in the hall.
I now have a 6ft nicely shaped conifer outside my front door which has lights on and in my lounge which is not huge I have a "half" tree which is prelite and hangs on the wall it stops my cat attacking it and saves space,it does look delightful but I miss my real tree.

We always had a real tree when I was a child, but for reasons of economy it was an extremely small one, planted out in the garden again each year. The poor thing never really recovered in between - I well remember the boy next door (who I had a crush on at about 14!) saying, ‘Has your Christmas tree had a heart attack?’
Eventually it was pensioned off and left to grow up.
My elder sister, once married with her own house, said before her first Christmas in it, ‘I’m having a BIG Christmas tree!’

For my first married Christmas we were in Oman, where at the time it was often hard to find even real basics in the shops. So I was very excited when a new, proper shop opened - I set off with a friend to find it - partly down dirt tracks, and Oh, joy! They actually had Christmas trees - the fakest things imaginable, no more than 3 feet, with ‘branches’ of sort of green and white tinsel that you just bent out.
But it came with lights and a few baubles - I was so happy with tree! I don’t think anyone else on our compound had one at all.

For powered harps read perhaps!

There were definitely fake trees in the 1950s as we had one , very like the one chewbacca described - powered harps the same design? The branches were thick & stiff a big like loo brushes ;but green) and there were little candle holders on tgd ends though we never put candles on. The ornaments were always the same and I loved it at the time though looking back it was awful!
Later my parents had real trees (small ones standing on a coffee table) and we had a real tree to for years and years. A couple of years ago I got so fed up with sweeping up leaves and a gc was allergic to real trees anyway so we got a fake one which at all bad and much easier to deal with.

Always real tree as a child - my dad was a poacher lived off the land, and used to help himself to one from Forestry Commission land nearby!

I then worked at a timber yard in the early years of my marriage and was given a free one each year but latterly I’ve bought a small artificial one which takes its place quite nicely in our sitting room.

Thank you SueDonim. I had a short break and lurked for a bit ?
Animals & Christmas trees reminds me of our last dog Millie, a large galumphing beardie, who was in kennels while we were in Oz one Christmas, but stayed in the owner’s house. I had an eMail from the kennel owner to let me know how she was doing. Well behaved apart from removing every chocolate from their tree and managing to leave the foil wrappings hanging from the branches as if nothing had happened ?

annesixty re: kitten and Christmas tree, many years ago we had two kittens and ended up suspending (the large) Christmas tree from a beam in the sitting room.
Every time the kittens jumped at it, it swung backwards and forwards. Both survived!

What a lovely thread this is. I’ve really enjoyed reading all your posts and feel quite nostalgic thinking back to those childhood days.

We always had a real tree although it was small enough to stand on a table in the hall and was only purchased on Christmas Eve. As a child, I loved the familiarity of the decorations which came out of their box each year.

We always started with a panic because the lights didn’t work and each bulb had to be tried until we found the broken ones.

I have never in my life seen a tree with real candles. Seems like an accident waiting to happen.?

Moving to Malta forty years ago when I married, real trees were just not available, so we bought an artificial one which lasted many years.

It is possible to find real trees now, but they are extremely expensive so I have never felt the need to buy one.

At our last house we had a lot of space and very high ceilings so DH bought a nine foot artificial tree which did look lovely.
I donated it to the cancer hospital when he died and they decorated it with all the different coloured ribbons for the different types of cancer.

I downsized to a much smaller place after he died so I bought a tree from Lidl which has to be assembled branch by branch but looks festive enough for me. ?

As a child always real. Those trees with their glorious pine smell are absolutely imprinted on my memory.

As a young mum at home with the children I wanted to repeat those memories for them, so the tree was always real, which we created a tradition around by going out with sandwiches and flask to buy one two weekends before Christmas .

Then after I went back to work real was replaced with a false one as time was always at such a premium.

Now I’m back to a real tree since retirement, the difference being that they are delivered to the door.

Love them!!

We grew up with a real tree, usually a spruce. Smelled wonderful, but awfully prickly, and we would find needles in the carpet for months! Coloured lights, and lots of tinsel (we called them icicles). I still have a few of the coloured glass baubles handed down from the 60's.

Meeting my DH, they always had an artificial tree. I put up with it for a few years but finally convinced him to go with real when we had children. We still get a real tree, usually a fir. So pretty. They are not as fragrant as spruce or pine, but don't drop the needles as readily.

Mind you, I have seen some beautiful artificial trees lately; the flocked ones (with fake snow on the tips) really appeal to me. Never say never.

Early 1950s. An artificial tree made of a thick stick of wood with stiff branches that had to be bent into shape and it stood on a circular lump of wood. Our tree lights were on a thick flex with painted pear shaped bulbs in red, green and blue. Very few ornaments although I remember a red spotted glass toadstool and a little green glass house. I've never had an artificial tree in my house ever since.

My father was an ambulance man but always managed to have Christmas Day off because most of his colleagues wanted Hogmanay and New Year's Day off.
He used to have to walk to work, as there was no public transport and it was a fair distance.
They were a hardy lot 60 years ago!

Maw I remember my dad working on Christmas dayit was just normal to us .Christmas dinner was when he came home .Hogmanay was a different story,a frenzy of cleaning and a hot meal on the table for midnight .I never felt like a heathen because we didn't make a fuss at Christmas ,everyone else around us was the same.My Welsh Auntie used to try to force my uncle to take the day off work ,she never succeeded.Sometimes I think we had it right and all the commercialisation isn't needed or wanted by many .We just go along with it because its expected .

I’m pretty sure my mum used to buy our tree from the greengrocer and he would deliver it on his truck.

I do have two artificial trees, so I can put one up in the dining room. I go for the opposite of a realistic one, if it’s going to be artificial, I want it to look artificial! One of them is a pre-lit spiral of tinsel-covered metal. It takes 30 seconds to put up and another 30 seconds to find the socket to plug it in and switch on. It folds flat after Xmas, taking up almost no space.

We’d an artificial tree as I was growing up - I think they were seen as more modern back in the 60s and 70s. We’ve always had a real one though, usually way too big for the house and a bit of a health and safety hazard to manoeuvre round. I did buy real candles and holders when we lived in Germany, but was never brave (or foolhardy) enough to light them.

Ours is up already this year. Full two weeks earlier than usual, but I felt in need of a bit of festive cheer. I just hope it lasts till Twelfth Night.

I grew up in a rather large house and we had 3 or 4 real trees. The one in the entrance hall was about 18ft. Absolutely beautiful.

I now have 3 real Christmas trees and 1 artificial

Well I don't have the real ones up yet. Usually wait until about the 15th. Can't be doing with droopy trees

Our trees are filled with decorations from relatives dating back 100 years or so. Also children's offerings are still displayed. There is the most hideous reindeer I made when I was about 8.

We buy some decorations every year. All colours and shapes.

Our trees are riotously chaotic.

And I love them

I got married at the end of September and ended up in the hospital high dependancy unit in November, where I spent six weeks very ill.
I was only allowed home on Christmas Eve, after sobbing my eyes out and begging my consultant to let me out. I was so excited to be home until I saw the bare 7ft real tree lying across the floor of our living room, with no pot to put it in and no decorations to be seen anywhere. ?

I had lain in hospital, dreaming of our first magical Christmas together as a married couple and the perfectly decorated real tree.
We always had an artificial one when I was young, and my mother never made a big thing about Christmas, so you can imagine my disappointment at the sight in front of me.

Poor DH had been working, attending uni at night and running backwards and forwards to the hospital some distance away, that he hardly had time to draw breath.
There was even worse to come in the kitchen, but that's another tale. ?

Artificial when growing up. I remember dressing the tree with strips of tinsel. In think it is called lametta. We have to collect it all in to use again next year.

Real when I had my own family. I love handmade tree decorations and between us we buy or make one or two every Christmas.

I've turned some this year to send to my daughter and granddaughter.

Oliver Cromwell was a real killjoy

Indeed Lemongrove
From The Scotsman

A 1640 Act of the Parliament of Scotland made the celebration of “Yule vacations” illegal. England, under Oliver Cromwell, also imposed a ban on Christmas at around the same time. Despite the repealing of the Act in 1686, the suppression of Christmas in Scotland effectively lasted for 400 years, with December 25 only becoming a public holiday in 1958. Boxing Day was not recognised as a festive holiday until 1974 . Concrete information on how this state of affairs lasted so long is scant, but it’s clear that the pre-existing emphasis on Hogmanay, coupled with the Presbytarian Church of Scotland’s indifference towards Christmas (even when the Victorians were actively reviving the holiday from its post-Puritan slumber) led most Scots to accept a long-standing status quo

Ah, Scotland......a strange country with different customs nae doot! ?