For whatever reason, neither my local grocery store nor my local drugstore seems to have candy canes

[conuly]

I had to go into the city to Duane Reade. Got six boxes, put two on the tree, set aside one cane each for the kids. The rest of the canes will go up on Christmas Eve - I know what I'm up against here!

We actually just got the tree yesterday, and I don't even know but for the first time in my life, being near the tree made me itchy and my throat scratchy too. Thankfully that seems to have eased up today. Never had a reaction like that from a Christmas tree. Google suggests that it's probably not an allergy to the tree, but perhaps a sensitivity to mold or to the terpenes that make the tree smell good. Hopefully I'll never have a reaction like that again! I didn't even get to help decorate it, really.

Poll #23098 Christmas Trees

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 91

View Respondents

What's your opinion on decorating?

View Answers

Less is more
30 (33.7%)

More is more
41 (46.1%)

No tree for me!
18 (20.2%)

Monocolor or two-color trees are

View Answers

Tasteful
30 (34.1%)

Boring
33 (37.5%)

No opinion, I just like clickies
25 (28.4%)

Tinsel?

View Answers

Yes!
17 (19.8%)

No - bad for the environment/pets
42 (48.8%)

No - a real hassle with fake trees
13 (15.1%)

No - because we don't have a tree
14 (16.3%)

Real tree or fake?

View Answers

Real
25 (29.4%)

Fake
46 (54.1%)

None
14 (16.5%)

If you don't celebrate Christmas, and you still put up a tree, should you call it a Christmas tree?

View Answers

Yes
13 (16.2%)

No, call it something else
5 (6.2%)

No, don't put up a tree at all
4 (5.0%)

Christmas stole that tree anyway
58 (72.5%)

Comments

[jtthomas]

I put "tasteful" for monocolor, but it's more /themed color/ I mean. I'm in a dorm room, so I sadly had to do a garland of green stuff in the shape of a tree instead of a tree, but I put red bows with gold string, gold bells, and pinecones with red ribbon on it. So red/green/gold, which is enough colors and enough contrast that even without turning the lights on it's pretty. And I do count the lights as a color all their own.

[conuly]

Yes, but it's not the traditional color vomit with occasional cats.

[kyrielle]

Fake trees because my cats try to chew on the darned things. Also, if I store it put together with lights on and a bag over it, I can just pull it out, remove the bag, and plug it in.

Which is the only reason we have one up this year....

[conuly]

Well, whatever works.

[dine]

I said no to tinsel, though that's at least partially because modern tinsel just isn't the same as the metal tinsel of my childhood. I'm pretty sure our tinsel was lead based, which was banned in the 70s?

I've not had a tree for the past few years, but they were all real
nowadays I think I'd go for a nice, pre-lighted fake, because of the general hassle of obtaining &disposing of a real tree. I've been craving one and while I didn't get one, I think I'll look for sales after Xmas

[cactuswatcher]

I think the tinsel my parents had was aluminum. It shocks me that they later were making it from lead!

[conuly]

LEAD!?

[kengr]

Yep. We had a box of lead tinsel (likely from the 50s) when I was a kid. We quit using it when we got an artifical tree.

[ioplokon]

yep. I'm pretty sure the tinsel we still have is lead? It's certainly old and I doubt aluminum would last that long. It's like... fine if you don't have pets or children and like, don't eat it? Probably???

[conuly]

Lead is dusty, isn't it? You touch it, you get bits of lead on your fingers, it sheds into the air. Everything you touch gets lead on it, and you breathe it in.

[kengr]

If it's lead it'll be *heavy*. I mean noticeably so. Also it'll "tarnish" to a dull gray.

Aluminum would be rather like thin strips of aluminum foil.

If it's lead, it won't be all that hard to melt it into a solid lump and use it for a weight. :-)

[conuly]

According to this, lead was preferred for tinsel precisely because unlike silver, it doesn't tarnish that fast... and unlike aluminum tinsel, it doesn't burn that easily: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/12/dont-lick-the-tinsel/421506/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinsel

[greghousesgf]

eek! That ranks right up there with putting lit candles on trees (which I've only seen people do in pictures and old movies, NOT real life)

[magnetic_pole]

I didn't know tinsel had environmental drawbacks (apart from the obvious, more-waste issue). Just looked it up, and now I know better. Fun poll! M.

[conuly]

Just like glitter, really. Pity, isn't it?

[konsectatrix]

I love real trees/wreaths/garland so I clicked, but IRL it's fake everything because cats.

[conuly]

Our pets seem uninterested. Maybe we lucked out.

[konsectatrix]

It's mostly the one out of the three--he tries to chomp down on anything green at least once. I've already sorted through my houseplants to avoid having anything particularly grassy or super toxic so he'll focus on the actual grass I bring in for him, but for some reason, evergreens really intrigue him too. They're still kinda young though, maybe he'll eventually move on.

[conuly]

We have a cat who really loves rosemary and oregano. I suspect something about the scent reminds her of catnip, so maybe for your cat it's the same with evergreens.

[the_siobhan]

I said real tree because I love the way they smell. But I don't put one up, so I don't have to clean up after them.

Re: tinsel, when I used to live with the wives[1], they did insist on putting up a tree (fake). I found something called "victorian tinsel" which was silver-coloured metal in long twists that you could hook over the branches. It was pretty and cat-safe.


[1]Polyam triad

[darkoshi]

After I found out last year that my family's hand-me-down tinsel is likely made with lead, I decided not to use it anymore. I don't like modern tinsel as much as it's so floofy. But this Victorian tinsel looks like a good replacement, and easier too. I may order some for next year, so thanks for the tip.

[darkoshi]

I think one should call the tree whatever one likes! Christmas is a holiday in which I partake in certain cultural and family customs, but I'm not Christian, and I don't celebrate it in a religious sense. So am I celebrating Christmas or not?

Your other post about non-Christmas songs made me wonder about that. Are songs which mention Christmas but not in a religious way, considered secular or not? Because there are a lot more like that, than wintry celebratory songs that don't mention Christmas at all. I was just listening to an album yesterday, and realized after a while that it was full of such songs:
Ingrid Michaelson's Songs For The Season
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl_FZqWv6XY&list=PL839tTyynEv3MO4ja4SFW3MTWi2v-j1mo

[conuly]

Are songs which mention Christmas but not in a religious way, considered secular or not?

It very much depends on who you ask, but my experience is that people who actively identify with some other religion or celebrate a different holiday are much more likely than atheists raised with Christmas to say that they're not secular because secular Christmas is still Christmas.

Cat

[mtbc]

Pippin is largely compatible with trees, he seems to like to sit under the Christmas tree and largely doesn't bother it if I am careful not to hang baubles low enough to catch his attention as things to bat at.

[gatheringrivers]

FWIW, I love the smell of real trees, but I'm against cutting down a tree just to stick it in my living room for a couple weeks. (An opinion I've always had.)

Therefore, I have a fake tree instead. Which is in a location where it basically stays up year-round at the moment because cats can't get at it.

I love tinsel, but the modern stuff is all flyaway and gets EVERYWHERE. So I'll also have to look for this "victorian tinsel" that another commenter mentioned. :)

[conuly]

Of course, nearly all Christmas trees in the USA are grown on tree farms. In that respect, it's not like cutting down a tree from a forest, more like cutting flowers for a vase.

[sabotabby]

One of these days I'll have my shit together and do a Soviet New Year Tree. (Only one colour, comrade: Red.)

[conuly]

People might think you're very Republican, though.

[sabotabby]

Bah. It's bad enough that in my country we let the Liberals have red, which they do not deserve, but the US had to go and give it to the Republicans? I don't get it.

[low_delta]

I celebrate secular Christmas. That is, not the birth of Christ, giving gifts, getting together with family, etc. So we put up a Christmas tree.

We don't do tinsel (icicles) anymore because my wife thinks it's a pain, and I'm too lazy to buy any, but the tree just isn't the same without the sparkles.

[author_by_night]

For the last question, I am definitely the fourth option. Especially as I don't think Christmas trees actually hold any religious significance. Besides, I feel like Christmas is just as much cultural in Western society as it is religious anymore; most of my family isn't strictly Christian, and yet Christmas is incredibly important. The same with a lot of my friends. So you know, whatever the tree means to you, light it and decorate it to your heart's content.

[conuly]

Well, they do have stars on top....

[pwcorgigirl]

We have had a fake tree for years, mainly because one of our cats delighted in climbing and knocking over live trees. Anything in the pine or cedar family also aggravates my allergies.

We had so much trouble finding candy canes last year that my husband ordered what he thought was two boxes and got two cases. We were still eating and giving them away in July and are heartily sick of them now.

[conuly]

I'll bet you are!

I'm sorry about your cats and allergies, but fake trees are really good now, aren't they?

[gingicat]

One of my favorite things is to help friends decorate their trees with a plethora of ornaments collected over the years, hearing them tell stories about every one. It may not be my holiday, but it's a great way to spend time with a friend.

[conuly]

Decorating things is always fun, and you can always reciprocate by having them celebrate your holidays. Twice the celebrations adds up somehow to four times the fun.

[ioplokon]

Didn't answer the last one bc my opinion is like, call the tree whatever you want, you know?

[conuly]

Next year, maybe I'll have a lighting ceremony where we pat the tree on the shoulders with a sword. "I hereby dub thee Lady Treevania."

[fred_mouse]

If i had my druthers, there would be no tree. But as I share the house with others who care, we have two sides of a the cardboard box our fridge was delivered in, with a 'tree' painted on it that gets decorated. And a tiny fake one that one of the kids requested. Tinsel goes on if someone else deals with it, and I consider monochrome/tasteful colour options to be very commercial (ie. I expect them of places that are Decorating, particularly shopping centres) and missing the point.

[conuly]

Tangent: Druthers is a fun word, though the etymology is about what you expect.

[fred_mouse]

I do like it. The etymology is not actually what I expected -- it being a common word of my childhood, I had assumed that it was yet more quirky Aussie slang. I do wonder how a typically US slang word was common in our family!

[flikkeren]

I don't do strands of tinsel because that is bad for the environment and I don't really like the way it looks, but I do tinsel garlands which are reusable and I think look nice. Also, the monochrone or bicolor trees or any other tree that has a strict theme, I think they all look nice and are tasteful, but personally have never done one myself and likely will never, because I love my hodgepodge of sentimental ornaments. Maybe I will get two trees one year and do one of each (I did click "more is more"--although, understated often looks nice too I LOVE CHRISTMAS). Also I live in the forest so we select the tree and cut it ourselves. Like going out and gathering dead and down wood, it helps manage the forest and maintain its health since you're basically weeding the smaller trees from the bigger ones to make a healthy forest :)

[conuly]

I suppose pines grow so fast that as long as you're careful to take young ones, or nearly dead ones, you're not doing any damage. Well, one tree a year isn't a problem anyway, not like clear-cutting.

[flikkeren]

Nah, and our forests here are overgrown anyway, which is a contributing factor to why the forest fires have been so devastating. Before white settlers moved in to the area, the forests were much less dense, much more open, and had bigger trees. We do need to thin things out a little (definitely opposed to clear cutting though!).

[conuly]

Well, yes, throughout North America the Native Americans engaged in sophisticated land management techniques.

[marahmarie]

"If you don't celebrate Christmas, and you still put up a tree, should you call it a Christmas tree?" I'd say, "Call it whatever you want". The tree is to put candles on to defeat the darkness of winter, not to celebrate Christ's birth. It's totally pagan so needs no formal name.

But tinsel's ugly, too (no ticky box). Put it on a tree and you're still finding strands all over the house next May.

[conuly]

Next year I'm calling it Bob. And if people ask why, I'll say "Because".

[marahmarie]

Next year I'm decorating mine with nothing but curb finds just to call it The Curbmas Tree. Merry Curbmas!

[conuly]

Good luck! Should be interesting.