MELINDA BEA
My mother has a holiday fear of waking up Christmas morning to a dead tree, so every year my family waits until the very last minute to buy our tree — Christmas Eve eve.
Sure we get a nice deal on the tree, perhaps $15 off the original price, but is it worth it? The tree is rarely over five and a half feet tall, nor does it bear any resemblance to the idealistic trees in the Good Housekeeping Christmas issue. They are not Christmas trees, but are instead Christmas sticks, as my friend likes to call them.
By delaying the buying of the tree my mother is attempting to solve the seasonal quandary of which to choose — a real or a fake tree.
Tasia Mikulich, a nursery expert at Ernst Home and Nursery, seems to think that there are plenty of reasons that point to the fake tree as the answer to this baffling Christmas dilemma.
“The number one concern is fire safety,” Mikulich said.
But of course that is not the only reason. The “save the trees” chants cannot be ignored nor can the fact that in the long run a fake tree would be less expensive. There is also the convenience of being able to fold up the tree, lights and all, and store it as easily as a sweater, or anything else that needs moth balls.
Mikulich said most people do not want to “deal” with all the hassle involved in putting up a Christmas tree — the hassle of picking one out, watering it, having to smell it and making it stand in that little green and red bowl.
I imagine that if this keeps up one day we will want to avoid the “hassle” of spending time with our family to decorate the thing in popcorn strings and wrinkled red berries.
Brett Barrus, a junior from Grantsville majoring in business management who worked at a Christmas tree lot, said he loves the natural beauty and smell of the tree.
“If my family had a fake Christmas tree then we’d be fake, but that is only because we have always had real ones,” Barrus said.
But what if everyone wanted real ones? Then what? Would the entire eco-structure of our world change as during one month of the year all the coniferous trees found themselves stripped from the outdoors and placed in the living rooms of festive people who think that fire hazardous lights on dry brittle trees is enjoyable?
Probably not. It will not make a big difference because not everyone likes real trees.
Mikulich said that there are many people who come into Ernst to buy fake trees. So if we total these numbers — lots of people who like fake trees, lots of people who like real ones, and let’s not forget the large portion of the population that do not even celebrate Christmas — I think we can come to a conclusion. Who cares?
It looks like the battle over real or fake has only added to the commercial Christmas fire, and that the best thing we can do over this holiday season is try to think of something more worthwhile.
