I finally bought a Christmas tree! I don’t love it! It’s not pre-lit!
Here’s what happened: I went on, I am not kidding, TWELVE tree-shopping trips. I couldn’t find anything I liked as much as each tree cost. Nearly the whole family wanted colored lights (Elizabeth wanted white, and I was undecided), but I couldn’t find any colored-pre-light trees I liked as much as the white-pre-lit trees. It was as if the fake tree industry thought that people who wanted colored lights would also want shiny, plasticky-looking, unrealistically-green trees, whereas people who wanted white lights would want their tree to look like a real tree. Or else I’d find a tree I liked, but the lights were weird: red, yellow, purple, and white lights, for example.
Also, it was making me super nervous that the lights were only guaranteed for 2 years: a fake tree only saves money over a real tree if I can use it for more than 5 years, and there were display trees that already had whole sections of lights out. My parents’ pre-lit tree has had no trouble with the lights and it’s been years—but for every story like that, there’s another “THIS HAS BEEN A NIGHTMARE. A CHRISTMAS-LIGHT-THEMED NIGHTMARE” review on some website. And contacting customer service to see about getting lights replaced under warranty is not as easy as buying a new string of lights. (Let’s see how I feel about this while I’m putting up the lights.)
So, I bought a $60 non-pre-lit tree that was on sale for $50. It’s this one, from Target, and I see online it’s on clearance for $42 with free shipping over $50, so if you find $8 more of stuff that qualifies for free shipping, you’ll get the same tree I got, plus $8 more free stuff, without having to lug anything in and out of the store/car. Bitch.
That picture they have up of the tree—how do the “artists” who designed that photo hug their children with a clear conscience?
(photo from Target.com)
Don’t they go home and feel like their dogs are looking at them reproachfully? The tree I brought home is a perfectly nice tree, and in fact looks MORE like a real tree—-but the tree in that photo is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. There are NO branch gaps in that photo. It is perfectly filled in from stem to stern. Here is a picture of the actual tree:
And that’s with Paul working for about an hour setting it up last night, making sure each branch was nicely splayed out to reduce gaps.
There is nothing wrong with branch gaps! I LIKE branch gaps! That is where the ORNAMENTS go! I wouldn’t even WANT that tree in the first picture: each ornament would have to rest diagonally along the exterior surface of the cone, because there is no place for hanging DOWN as nature intended. But I still object on principle to them acting as if that’s a photo of the tree I bought, because it obviously is not. The tree they photographed is ANOTHER TREE ENTIRELY. The branches CANNOT PHYSICALLY BE ARRANGED like the tree in their photo. Even if they took all the branches from the back of the tree and tied them to the front of the tree, they could not achieve that “photo” of the “tree.”
Anyway. Here is what makes me happy with this purchase:
1. It cost the same as the cut tree we bought last year, which we were unhappy with for a variety of reasons. So if next year I find a fake tree I like better, we will financially be no further behind than if we’d bought a cut tree again this year.
2. There are always people on Freecycle.org looking for Christmas trees, so I don’t even have to fret about issues of waste: if we don’t want this tree next year, we can feel happy about donating it to someone else who wants it.
3. I was really, really, really sick of looking for a Christmas tree.
Ha! That tree looks like our last one, which we called Charlie Brown, for obvious reasons. It really looked a lot fuller when we strung it with lights and garland and ornaments. The good thing about a normal (non-pre-lit) tree is that you can put as many lights on as you want, or even change it up next year with different colors or whatever. We put so many lights on our Charlie Brown Christmas Tree that it honestly looked fuller and not see-through.
Also, not sure if anyone does it anymore, but tinsel helps.
I’m with you–I cannot believe the difference between the advertised photo and the real-life one!
We go with a real one every year, but this year Christmas is erased from existence for our family because we board a plane late on Christmas Eve and we’ll be crossing the International Date Line.
I spent close to a million dollars to ship a teeny box of stocking gifts down to Australia to keep the Santa dream alive for my kids. sigh
I TOTALLY agree with you on principle! That is bogus fake tree selling there.
I bought our fake tree immediately after Christmas about four or five years ago at the Goodwill that gets the Target crap that Target can’t sell on clearance. It is huge and pre-lit and we have, as I said, had it for more then four years. I’ve never had a light go out and it’s extremely easy to assemble. There. That is my example to counteract any bad examples out there. We have had a wonderful $60/5 years so far experience.
I think your tree is very nice, esp for the price (how you find all those deals continues to amaze me). Definitely not the tree pictured though. Can you imagine the disappointment of those ordering who thought they were getting the pictured tree? Ouch.
We always do real because I love the SMELL and fake pine smell makes me sneeze but it took us over an hour to get ours in the stand this year because it was 7 ft, insanely full, and crooked stump. So yeah, I am slowly understanding why people go to fake trees.
I snorted with laughter after I read “Bitch.”
This whole post was so funny. But still helpful! That’s one of the reasons I love your blog.
WELL, the stands look the same. So there is THAT.
How do they hug their children with a clear conscience – I have a migraine and I’m drugged and weepy and weird, so maybe that’s all it is, but I so want to embrace you right now. You win at not-perfect fake Christmas trees. Think of me hanging my ornaments on the droopy unsupportive branches of my real tree as needles spray everywhere and be happy.
Photoshop, not just for unrealisticly skinny models anymore!
I like your tree. I think it looks like it has personality which is always what I look for in a tree. I discovered last year, quite by accident, that if you wait until say the 22nd or 23rd there are places that give away actual fresh Christmas trees. We had decided to forgo a tree because of price and then a friend offered to pick us up a free tree while they were getting theirs.
In the end it was lovely. We already had the house decorated for most of the month of December, and then on the night before Christmas Eve we put up and decorated our tree. It was a lot of fun and brought back some of the old Christmas like magic.
That and I only had to deal with chasing the cats out of the tree for a week and a half!
Free trees are now our new tradition.
I can’t believe i have to enter the realm of stressing about christmas trees already. I find the christmas tree industry to be absurd and strangely horrible and yet, i see the farms over on 92 and so it IS someones living. i want to support the farmers! and plus, now that i have a yard we will shred the tree and use it for mulch so at least i wont have to weep while putting a perfectly good dead tree out on the curb. Last year we got our tree for free. usually we wait until the last second and go buy one cheap. one year we had a christmas ficus. I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO THIS YEAR?!?
i think you should complain to target about their obvious doctoring of that picture.
We’ve had a prelit Christmas tree (also from Target, about this size) for years, and for the first two years it was GREAT. And then the lights started to burn out and you know what is MORE WORK than putting lights on a Christmas tree? Taking ones that are intrically woven and designed to stay on forever OFF. I will never go prelit again.
I love this post. That is all.
Well. That’s… QUITE a difference!
I want a Christmas tree. I had one last year, but last year I had more money and a guy help with the heavy lifting/apartment weaving, so I’m still on the fence about it this year.
Can’t wait to see your tree decorated!
Jason and I had another Tree Decorating fight this year (last year he was mad about our Christmas card, so he refused to decorate with me). This year, he felt he strung the lights too closely together at the bottom of the tree versus the top, and despite my insistence that it was fine, he made us redo all 4 bunches of Christmas lights. Then, when we plugged them in (after checking them ahead of time to make sure they worked), only 3 of the 4 lit up. So we had to redo it all for a THIRD time.
And that’s when I grouched that I didn’t NEED a Christmas tree this year ANYWAY, and we could just go ahead and PUT IT AWAY and NOT HAVE A TREE. (This was two hours in, mind you, and my patience, she was GONE.)
That’s when I decided to get a pre-lit tree next year, but…I hear the same horror stories. Plus, if I did buy one, and the lights didn’t work? ARMAGEDDON.
I bought a tree probably 10 years ago from (k) m a r t. Other than one short string of lights not currently working, it is still going strong. The patch of not-working lights is hardly noticeable, we just kind of put more ornaments in that area. I think I paid around $50 for it in an after Christmas clearance, and I am pretty certain it is from the
M a r t h a S t e w a r t collection. Might be worth looking into after the holiday? Anyways, your tree will be quite lovely once it is decorated.
Every year I’m tempted to go fake, but then I remember how I mocked and taunted my own parents and told them they were ruining Christmas when they confessed they’d even THOUGHT about a fake tree….so, I guess I’m being held hostage by my 15 year old self.
ANYWAY. I see the appeal of fake, and I do think about it (Yankee Candles were invented to compensate for lack of fake tree smell I am pretty sure), so this info is helpful.
And I could be wrong as I have no experience, but can’t you store fake trees with all the lights on? I feel like I’ve heard of people doing this. Not the pre-lit kind, just regular fake trees they added their own lights to and left on in storage all year. It seems like that makes it that much more appealing. Wrestle the lights ONCE!
The pictures of the fake trees are ridiculous! Ours ALWAYS have tons of gaps, and that picture? ha! Nice try Target!
Our pre-lit tree went out after 2 Christmases, but we just put a regular string of lights over it. (we have two trees and that’s the “for show” one so we really don’t care.)
My parents have scared me off of pre-lit trees. They only had theirs for a few years before the lights started going. They swore never again to buy a pre-lit tree.
It’s just planned obsolescence. They WANT the lights to burn out after a couple years, because they WANT you to buy a new tree. It’s a conspiracy, man!
My problem with Christmas tree buying is that I don’t enjoy going to look at them, but it’s also the kind of thing that’s risky to buy online, as you illustrated. So, we have a little 3 foot hand-me-down tree.
We have a pre-lit and so far, it has been fine. My first pre-lit tree came out of the box with only half the lights working, but, um, I just turned that side to the wall, since it was a cheap tree we intended to use only that year. And then, EIGHT years later, when we finally replaced that half lit tree, none of the OTHER lights had ever gone out. So my track record is that no NEW lights ever stopped working on our pre-lit trees.
I have a pre-lit tree w/ multi-colored lights. I add white lights because the white lights I have you can set to different settings. I set mine to fade on and off randomly which makes the tree “sparkle”. And you’re right the blank spots are for ornaments. Now can I get motivated enough to put the darn thing up and decorate it……
That is so clearly not the same tree.
I also like gaps. Very much so. I’m impressed at your $50 price tag. Nicely done. We’re still real tree people, but every time I see those pre-lit trees, I think about how much easier they must be.
Gaps are great. Real trees have gaps and are not perfectly symmetrical or fluffed out. But those are two different trees. Assholes.
i agree – i like the ACTUAL tree quite a lot, but am QUITE HUFFY over the untruth in marketing here.
i am also despondent over all of these awesome christmas tree posts, because i have an asshole cat who does not allow me to have nice things in my house. or things that i would tantalizingly hang perfectly battable-toys off of, for example.
I am clearly way out of touch when it comes to fake trees, and can only guess what most of this is about. We bought a fake tree (just a tree, made of plastic, looks kind of real. No lights) for about $10 in 2002. I then bought a couple of sets of lights (red, probably $5 or less each) and a few ornaments. Every year I add a couple of ornaments (and, of course, the girls “make” stuff at school). Originally, the theme was very much red-gold-silver-white, but as the girls’ influence has increased, the wilder and more unlikely the colours have become, so now it’s a rainbow effect. I also let them decorate it, which means that every year the top part contains pretty much nothing because they can’t reach (though obviously, there’s less bare branch every year as they get bigger).
I’m delighted with this fake tree! And can’t imagine spending $50 on one (though I guess if there are lights included somehow that would make a difference). My mother always insisted on a real one, despite the fact we were never at home for Christmas, and then bitched for months afterwards about pine needles in the carpet.
I’m lazy, my cat has a death wish when it comes to plants and would almost certainly try and eat/destroy a real tree and frankly, my little plastic tree is perfect.
Especially as Christmas trees in homes are pretty rare in France anyway (the French really, really don’t know how to do Christmas, with the exception of the Alsace region).
Magic27- Here, $200-300 is more typical for a fake tree. So you can see why I had trouble laying my money down!
Our tree is like that one, too. Every year we put it up and I’m shocked at the sparse-ness. I don’t want it quite as thick as that advertised picture, but I do wish it was filled in a little more.
About five years ago I bought a pre-lit tree from QVC that has colored lights and white lights. It has a remote and I can turn on both light strands or just one or the other. I love it! I have had it five years, no problem with the lights. However I do think I spent about $200 on it.
Did you check treetopia? I’ve had mine for 3 years with no problems and I think they have a light warranty.
I am DYING over the difference between the photo and the actual tree. NOT EVEN CLOSE.
Also: “Bitch.”
Hahahahahaaaaaaa!
Thanks for the answer, Swistle. And yes, if they generally cost that much, you got yourself a real bargain! I can’t think of anywhere you’d be able to find a fake Christmas tree here for that kind of price ($200! For a fake tree!). It would almost be worth buying one here and sending it to the US by mail… Seriously, here they are very, very cheap : http://www.tati.fr/decoration-de-noel/sapin-de-noel-artificiel/tous-les-produits/sapin-artificiel-vert—180-cm/51517.html
We bought our pre-lit 6 ft tree from Wal-Mart three years ago for $30 (clearanced) and haven’t had any problems with any lights going out yet (knocks on wood). I refuse to ever string lights again. EVER.
And no, your tree looks NOTHING like the one they had pictured. If I were to buy that tree online after going by the picture I’d be pisssssay once it got home.