This week was the week for people to put their “real” Christmas trees out on the curb for pickup, and I was amazed at how many people on our street and in our area had a real tree. Probably 80% of the houses on our block have a real tree out front.

We rarely had a real tree growing up — maybe twice that I can remember — so I’m totally comfortable with an artificial tree. and I have never done the real tree thing, and that’s okay — having a fake tree lets me get it up nice and early, and I don’t have to worry about the watering thing, because heaven knows, I cannot keep a plant alive in this house. Ferns and mums shudder as I walk past them in the grocery store.

For some reason though, I really thought that having a real tree was becoming a rarity. It seems that every Christmas tree lot I pass in December is loaded with trees but no customers. I see maybe three or four cars each year carting home a tree on their roof, and I never once saw any of our neighbours bringing in a tree from outside. Plus, someone told me about this link, which shows that if you do not keep your real tree in water, it can become completely engulfed in flames inside of 5 seconds, and the entire room becomes a burning firepot of hell in about 40 seconds. Scary, no?

Anyway, I guess these days they take the used trees and do useful things with them, like making them into mulch, or feeding them to elk (a weird story I read in the paper this morning about a dude on his elk farm). In any case though, I’m still surprised at how everyone seems to have a real tree. I guess we’re the odd ones out!