Tis the season to be jolly! Well, technically, not yet. Christmas is 168 days away, but who’s counting? Since Christmas in July is a thing (if you don’t believe me, click here), I thought I’d use this halfway mark to let you in on a little secret. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with Christmas. The music, the meaning, gift giving (I love finding my loved ones gifts that they will love), and the all around cheerfulness of everyone who isn’t a Grinch during the holidays. I wish I could say the weather, but I live in Florida.
The Backstory
We’ll blame my obsession with Christmas on my mother. My siblings and I grew up with Christmas trees sprayed white to look like they were blanketed with the perfect layer of snow. The Christmas trees were real, the snow was not. If you live up north, you may be wondering how we get real Christmas trees in Florida. Instead of chopping them down ourselves, we buy them from business owners who set up shop under tents bringing trees by semi-trucks from other places.
My mom had to have perfectly coordinated decor, down to the wrapping paper being on theme (usually some variation of gold, red, and/or evergreen). She was undoubtedly obsessed with Christmas and passed the torch to me. On my now husband and I’s first Christmas living together (back in 2015), he surprised me with a real tree and all the decorations to go along with it. It was so thoughtful and, since it was our first time doing Christmas together, it was perhaps the most special tree of my adult life.
After that Christmas, he let me take the reins and subsequently shared in my obsession with the details. Every year we picked out the perfect Christmas tree at Kelly’s Christmas Trees and, once we purchased our home with high ceilings, we graduated from 6-7 foot trees to 10-12 foot trees. Then, my husband flipped the script on me! He started presenting the case for switching from real Christmas trees to a fake Christmas tree. Your girl was appalled. Now why would we ever want to do that? I thought. The logic (the larger flocked trees were costing us $500-$600 every year for a tree that got dumped in under 2 months) wasn’t enough to convince me to make the change.
How We Switched to an Artificial Christmas Tree
How did he get me onboard? It took a year or two, but the deciding factor for me was when he randomly said: “Babe, you see how much you love Christmas. If we had a fake Christmas tree, you’d be able to put it up right after Halloween. You won’t have to wait until the real trees go on sale around Thanksgiving.” Sold! After much research we decided on the Bentley of artificial Christmas trees, King of Christmas. 2022 was our first Christmas with our new fake Christmas tree and I was impressed. I did not expect to be in love, but I was and I still am. Can’t wait to put it up again this year!
I recorded two different reels with the same audio – one with our last real Christmas tree in 2021 and the other with our first fake Christmas tree in 2022. Which one do you prefer? If you love our fake tree as much as we do, click here to shop.
[…] used to having real trees – a tradition carried from childhood right into adulthood. You can read about the experience here. I cannot believe I am saying this, but I will never go back to a real Christmas tree. Like ever. […]