Deciding between a real or artificial tree with the environment in mind

By JiaYing Grygiel

Special to At Home in the Northwest

Full disclosure: I own a fake Christmas tree. This year will be its 12th season bringing Christmas cheer to my living room, and I bought it secondhand off Facebook Marketplace. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

How do you balance the joy of the holidays with environmental guilt over needless consumption? It’s an age-old holiday question: real or fake? Or do you even need a tree at all?

Some options are easier on the planet: Consider a real tree from a local farm. (Hey, Taylor Swift grew up on a Christmas tree farm!) Or buy a potted tree from a nursery that you can move outside and plant. You could even decorate a houseplant — Christmas fiddle leaf fig, anyone?

If you go the artificial route instead, pick a high-quality tree that doesn’t wind up in the landfill at the end of the season.

Or you could choose the DIY option. The most creative, out-of-the-box trees can be made using sticks, paper or even a ladder.

“It’s a decorated triangle at the end of the day,” says Gary Wichansky, CEO and creative director of Analog Heart Creative Studio in Seattle. “Everybody’s looks different, everybody’s looks unique. [It’s] an expression of who they are and their family. What do you want to do?”

If you get a real tree

Maybe it just isn’t Christmas for you without the aroma of fresh pine, or you have warm and fuzzy memories of picking out a tree as a family every year. But oh, the saddest sight in January is all the brown trees lining the curb.

Keith Stocker is the owner of Stocker Farms, a fourth-generation family farm in Snohomish, where a new seedling is planted next to every stump. That’s 3,000 to 5,000 seedlings a year.

Christmas trees are grown commercially on about 16,000 farms nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Stocker planted his first Christmas tree seedlings in 2001, and now grows 22 acres of trees.

Which kind of tree should you get? The fast-growing Douglas fir is less expensive, but the noble fir has the best needle retention. Frasier firs are good for small spaces, while Stocker prefers the Nordmann’s fir, which has a softer, teddy bear look. Grand firs smell the best, he says.

“You just can’t replace the evergreen scent that comes from a grand fir. A grand fir is an absolute perfume factory,” Stocker says.

If you want to cut down your own tree, hurry. Stocker Farms opened last week, and their live trees usually sell out quickly. Stocker’s precut trees sell out by the second weekend of December.

“A real tree is becoming harder and harder to find,” he says. “Mainly, it’s because the people who grow the trees are aging out. The average age of farmers is 60 years old and increasing.”

Prices vary by size and species; you can expect to pay about $100 for a noble fir. To keep your investment looking good longer, keep your tree watered and away from heat vents and fireplaces. If you buy a living potted tree from a nursery, don’t leave it inside for more than a week, and keep it as cool as possible.

If you use an artificial tree

If you hate sweeping up needles, a fake tree may be the thing for you. Artificial trees are low-maintenance and they come in every price point, from $25 to $2,500 and up.

This holiday season, 83% of households with a Christmas tree will choose an artificial one, according to a survey by the American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA), a group that represents retailers and manufacturers of mainly artificial Christmas trees.

“The great thing about an artificial tree is you don’t throw it away every year,” says Jami Warner, executive director of the ACTA. “Keep it carefully, keep it clean. Don’t manhandle it. You can use it year after year.”

Five years is the break-even point, Warner says, and the average artificial tree’s life span is 10 years. Stored properly, a good-quality tree can last up to 20 years. (My secondhand tree is of indeterminate age and most of the lights are out, so I throw on another strand and call it good. Charlie Brown all the way.)

The best way to store a tree is to fold it up and carefully put it into a big bag that zips. If you don’t have storage space, donate your tree instead of dumping it. Neighborhood Buy Nothing groups are a good place for rehoming items that can be reused.

The most popular artificial trees are the pre-lit, natural-looking ones. Some have bulbs that change colors and cadence, and some even play music. For sustainability points, there are trees made with recycled water bottle caps. Warner personally owns five or six artificial trees, including a bright blue one for Hanukkah.

“There is no such thing as a bad Christmas tree,” Warner says. “All Christmas trees are good. It’s a matter of personal preference.”

Consider tree alternatives

A Christmas tree that isn’t a tree? Sure, why not?

For four years, a Santa-themed attraction in a gas station popped up on Aurora Avenue with Skee-ball, reindeer ring toss and hot cocoa from gas pumps. Kringle’s Filling Station began in 2021 as the city was coming out of the pandemic as a way to bring much-needed holiday cheer to the neighborhood.

Analog Heart Creative Studio ran Kringle’s Filling Station in a building that was originally a gas station in the 1920s and then an auto body shop. They took the theme and ran with it: A tree-shaped stack of tires was painted green and layered biggest to smallest. License plates, sourced on eBay, were nailed to the wall in a triangle, while paint cans were stacked into a giant cone. There were even ornaments suspended on fishing line from an open stepladder, suggesting a tree in the negative space.

“It was a labor of love,” Analog Heart’s Wichansky says. For 2025, Kringle’s Filling Station is on hiatus, waiting to be reinvented.

Another option, if you don’t want to buy a fake tree or cut down a real one, is to decorate the trees you already have.

The evergreens and deciduous trees at Quil Ceda Village, located north of Seattle in Tulalip, get all dressed up for the holiday season. The trees are 20 years old, and the tallest stands 75 feet tall. It takes tall lifts and two days to deck out a single tree.

The lighting project grew from 3 million LED lights three years ago to 9.7 million this year. “Every year we’ve added a little more,” says Teresa Meece, operations director for Quil Ceda Village.

“It transforms you when you walk into this space,” she says. “As someone who works there almost seven days a week, nobody’s angry. Everyone is so joyful. There’s not even a lot of talking because they’re so mesmerized by it. It’s truly a happy place to be.”