If you celebrate Christmas, the holiday season shows what kind of person you really are: the real or fake Christmas tree kind of person. I see the benefits in being a fake tree person, I suppose. You make only a one-time purchase, and no traipsing through 5 feet of snow or having your eyes frozen shut à la Audrey Griswold. My husband and I were even fake Christmas tree people for the first few years of our marriage, but last year we were won over again to becoming “real tree people.”
Throughout my childhood, our family and another family went Christmas tree hunting together every winter at a snowy Pennsylvania tree farm. We would bet on who could find the best Christmas tree and “tag” our options with crumpled up tissues my mom and her friend had stuffed in their jacket pockets. Once we found our perfect family Christmas tree, we went to a local restaurant for lunch and to our respective homes to decorate, filled with Christmas cheer.
After we had our son and bought our first house, I knew I wanted our family to have those same memories, but when we moved to Colorado, we only found urban Christmas tree lots in grocery stores. A couple of friends told us that you can cut down your own Christmas tree in some of the Front-Range area national forests. All we needed was to acquire a tree-cutting permit before we went for $10.