Oh Christmas Tree, Oh [Fake] Christmas Tree

One of my favorite things about Christmas used to be getting a tree. When my dad finally went out and bought a big old fake Christmas tree for the basement, well, I was less than impressed! Where was the delightful pine smell to greet you as you entered the house? So totally not there, that’s where.

So, I made do by having my own little real tree up in the living room, which was just as well, because that was also the point in time my dad decided he wanted to “theme” our Christmas tree in red and gold. Thus, all of my actually fun ornaments got relegated to a box in the crawl space. Um, excuse me?!

The Christmas tree smell and my asthma

The first year after I was diagnosed with asthma, my mom and I again went out to some parking lot and picked up a tiny, tiny Christmas tree. Now, I don’t think I am allergic to pine trees or anything, but let’s just say that having the smell of a pine tree in my house for a couple of weeks was likely no longer the best thing for my lungs. If it wasn’t the next year, it was the year after that I finally caved and there was no more real tree to be had in my house.

…Which didn’t necessarily mean there were fewer trees.

Tales of artificial trees

My parents have loosened up on their desires to have thematically colored trees. But, by that point in time, I had already started decorating trees of my own. And yes, somewhat thematically at that. A couple of years ago, my mom got this two-pack of little pre-lit Christmas trees in pots, and then my fun began.

Because, seriously, if you’re going to go artificial, you can also go ridiculous and have two or three extra trees in your house since that does not equate to two or three times the pine needles floating about.

So, I busted out my popsicle lights.

And my cupcake lights.

And all the decorations I got when I worked at a daycare.

And all my FUN decorations.

It was a great solution

Now there are trees on all three levels of my house, and unlike the last giant REAL tree we got, they don’t fall over in the middle of the night. (…That thing touched the ceiling though, so… it was probably actually too big for the house, to be honest.)

I suppose in the end we all won. I got my own tree(s), my lungs don’t hate it, and my parents could have their own thematic tree in the basement. But alas, they relented and went back to full color. And my house can just smell like cookies baking or whatever, instead of pine. That’s cool. (Although it probably means I need to bake more cookies.)

Do real Christmas trees affect your asthma? What kind of Christmas tree do you have at home?