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Live Christmas trees should certainly be cut down for Christmas. Let us remember that most people who are using 'real' trees don't go out into the forest, walk around for hours on end in bitter cold weather looking for the perfect tree. Most of us go down to the local Christmas tree lot where the trees have already been cut and are set up for us to walk among for all of 5 minutes before picking one we think will fit into our living rooms and hold onto enough needles that it will still look halfway decent through the end of the year.

People tend to either like real trees or artificial trees, and nothing you can say or do is going to change their minds. I happen to be one of those people who just loves the idea of having a real tree. I live in a somewhat rural area with lots of farms and orchards, though none of them is a Christmas tree farm. I see firsthand on a regular basis the effects of good crops/bad crops and how that effects our local economy. I have no doubt that Christmas tree farmers worry about that, as well.

The Christmas trees in our community are picked up after Christmas and turned into mulch. Some folks who live even further out in the country than we do just haul them out in a field and let the birds and other wild animals use it for shelter. It can always be ground up later.

We have had several Christmas trees that were balled and burlapped. The idea is a good one, but you can only have the tree in the house for a few days, then you have to get it back outside and in the ground. That means that you have to plan weeks in advance, at least where I live, and get a massive hole dug before the ground freezes. You then have to find a place to store the soil that you removed from the hole to use when you plant your tree-remember you can't leave it outside or it will freeze. We actually had very good luck with that and several of the evergreens on our property were at one time our Christmas tree. It's pretty cool to be able to say that, but it is a lot of work. I'll just be sticking with a tree from the local lot from now on.

Learn more about this author, Kelly Szymanski.
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