by Debbie Robus

Created on: December 10, 2007

Should live trees be cut down at Christmas? The great debate over cutting down trees at Christmas is a question that arose in the late seventies/early eighties. I remember childhood treks through the woods to cut the perfect cedar tree for our living room. Living in the rural Ozarks of Arkansas, there were plenty of farms and forested areas where land-owners would gladly "sacrifice" one of these sticky overgrown shrubs. The fragrance filled our home for a couple of weeks, and we carefully adorned the branches with brightly colored lights (yes, the old-fashioned BIG kind), delicate glass ornaments, and finally, the shimmering "icicles." By this step, we were always tired and ready to just toss them in handfuls that made silvery "globs" on the branches, while my mother insisted we layer them individually for a more "decorated" effect.

In the late 60's, my grandmother acquired one of those shiny silver "aluminum" trees, and she put away her bubble lights, glass balls and tinsel in favor of a more "chic" look of all red balls (or was it blue?) and this was my foray into the world of artificial Christmas trees. Our neighbors the Bakers also had an aluminum tree that they set in their big picture window with one of those lights and color wheels that made it transform from green to red to blue before our eyes! My sister and I would stand in our bedroom window each evening and watch that tree change colors. Still, the smell and "feel" of Christmas were somewhat lacking in these stylish additions to the holiday dcor. When I was in high school, my mother succumbed to a busy schedule with three kids, attending college, and running a household, and she bought an artificial Christmas tree. She kept that same tree for probably 25 years. As artificial trees in the seventies went, it was a pretty good one, and once we covered it in hand-made ornaments and lights, it was a decent representation but it didn't provide any fragrance.

When my husband and I married, we vowed to always have a "real" tree. Our first was the top of a pine tree. We traveled with friends to their cabin in the Ozark foothills, where we cut rather large pine trees that had nicely shaped tops that we used for our Christmas tree. The remainder of the trees was cut into logs for firewood/kindling, so nothing was wasted, and we felt we were being friends of the environment. As college students in the seventies, this was important! After Christmas, a fish and wildlife club from the university gathered the discarded

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