Pros & Cons of Artificial vs. Real Christmas Trees

Video Transcript

"Ho! Ho! Ho! I'm Matt Cail, and on behalf of Expert Village, today I'm going to show you how to set up and decorate an artificial Christmas tree. If you are considering having an artificial Christmas tree this holiday season, I would be remiss if I did not basically cover the core pros and cons to having an artificial Christmas tree versus an actual real, live one. There are a lot of different things that go into it beyond just the "well, one's real; one's fake." So, let's kind of cover these real quick, shall we? First off, let's make you feel better about your artificial tree. What are the cons to having a real live Christmas tree? Well, first off, you have to go to at Christmas tree lot pretty much every single year, or go out to the woods and cut it down yourself and then bring it home. That is not fun. With an artificial Christmas tree, it's going to keep going year after year after year. Nothing stops artificial Christmas trees. So, another con of having a real live Christmas tree: you've got to water it and you've got to make sure it stays full, otherwise it's going to dry out real fast. The other thing is that real live Christmas trees have a finite life. They are going to die. With an artificial Christmas tree, if you guys want to put up this thing after Halloween, it will still look exactly the same come Christmas time. With some real Christmas trees, even two weeks can sometimes stretch how long they are going to be able to hold on before giving up the ghost. The other thing is: needles and other tree debris; lots and lots of needles. Get ready for them to be falling all over your carpet, even outside of the tree skirt. You're not going to be able to contain all of the needles. You are going to have to keep cleaning them up. You might have a couple of debris from your artificial tree, especially earlier on, but that won't be anything like what you are going to get with a real tree (especially a big one). And lastly, but not least: your nose. Some people are going to have allergic reactions to real Christmas trees. You get some of those evergreens or even some of the noble Firs, everyone is going to be different. Some people will be totally fine, other people will start to stop up and be crying out their eyes until after Christmas. So, that's something else to consider with your real Christmas trees is allergies, as well. There's also the idea that some people hate (environmentally) where you have to keep chopping down real live trees. There are tree farms, there is an industry behind that, but that's something else to consider. If you are somebody that that really bothers. Of course, you switch over to your big official cons of having an artificial Christmas tree: it's artificial! It's not a real Christmas tree. It doesn't look and feel like a real Christmas tree does. It doesn't smell like a real Christmas tree does with that nice pine scent...you're just not going to get it. That's something to consider. It's a bunch of pros and cons; there's no right or wrong answer. You have to consider what's going to be best for your Christmas season. "