Benjamin believes that real christmas trees are very important.
"Well, why not just have a fake christmas too?" Benjamin says, when approached with the idea of an artifical tree.
Perhaps his preference has merit, but since this is MY blog we will ignore that, and simply humor his eccentricities.
I like fake trees because they are cost effective. Especially when borrowed from a friend or purchased at a garage sale.
Benjamin believes that real trees can be made more cost effective by getting a lot of use out of them. A $30 tree up for 3 weeks is $10/week. Left up for 6 weeks, it is $5/week- that's half price!
He likes to leave the tree up until all the Holidays are past. And by Holidays I mean Valentines Day. So the first week in January I get to do all of the tree removal. It is a messy and crazy business, much easier with an artifical tree, but that's alright. I am willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of marital harmony. Besides, This year I am cooking a Tofurkey for Christmas dinner. Benjamin will need some payback after that.
Since we must get a 'real' tree (is there an imaginary tree? perhaps it would cost the square root of $-25.00), We try to get a cool one. We visited a tree farm yesterday. It had a lot of trees, it was 10 miles away, and it was way over priced.
A lot ofhte local christmas tree farms justify their high prices in a variety of ways.
1. The experience of walking in nature, selecting and cutting your own tree is worth the extra $20.
If your only exposure to nature is a christmas tree lot then you are already in trouble. The parks and trails in the county are all free. You are allowed to look at all of those trees free of charge, year round, and they are even open on christmas.
2. Patronizing tree farms supports local business, small businesses and helps the economy.
No one should attempt to make a living growing christmas trees. It is at best a part time oppertunity. Small businesses with bad models a.k.a. way overprices stuff should go out of business quickly so the failed proprieters can go on to other potentually more successful ventures.
3. Local Christmas tree farms are more "GREEN" than Christmas tree lots and big box stores
Actually, chrsitmas trees in this area are an extremely "green" product in genreal. In this state the soil is perfect, nothing needs to be added to it. Importing trees to the city enmass on one large truck is much more efficent than having every family individually drive out to a farm, select a tree then drive back to the city.
We only visited one Christmastree farm this year, and it was way overpriced. The average tree was $50. Since we had driven all the way out to it, we felt rather obligated to try and find something to buy. As it turned out we left and bought our tree at Home Depot for $16.99.
A great price. I have no buyers' remorse. It smells piney and the kids love it.
When we decided to leave the tree farm, I thought of all the stuff we could buy for the $30
we would save by not buying their tree. I think we will have great stockings this year.
When we returned home, we set up the tree then let the kids decorate it while we watched Alabama beat Texas in the SEC championship. I love football season. Its like a holiday every saturday for 5 monthes, that requires no gifts, trees, or complicated relative dilemmas.
5 comments:
I think his commitment to the real tree comes from where he grew up. In that area trees are easy to find, you could even get them from the side of the road if you wanted. I had a hard time giving up the real tree but the expense made me into a fake tree convert. I refuse to pay the crazy prices or to buy a dried pre cut tree so we got an ok fake tree on clearance and have been using that ever since.
Yes awesome mom, That is very true. Benjamin considers trees to be a type of weed, which they are in this area. When we lived near a national forest we could go and cut our own for $3. That was really fun.
I love your arguments. We also have the real tree/fake tree dilemma in our family. I personally like fake trees, too! I'll have to use this against Travis... :)
I solves this dilemma. I forced myseld to have a psychosomatic "reaction" to our real tree. My arms and hands became numb and little bumps emerged. No more real trees. I'm lovin' life now.
I need to develop the ability to have psychosomatic attacks at will. Could come in handy If I ever have to testify against my self in court or something.
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