Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for December 17, 2018

The big advantage to an artificial tree is that the needles don’t dry out. I can leave it up all year!

(and who doesn’t need a little Christmas by the time July rolls around??)

The early ones looked like a delightfully green collection of toilet brushes.

We got one of those metallic trees with the light color device. Really neato for the 1960’s. So futuristic!

Actually, the earliest ones, of which I believe this is an example, were aluminum. The branches came in paper sleeves such as everybody was holding in the last panel. You couldn’t use lights on them (for obvious reasons!) so “dad” would usually buy and set up a rotating multihued pinwheel light projector to shine on the shiny silver branches – it really was quite bizarre!

Those trees were ultimate kitsch!

We also have an artificial tree, primarily for ecological reasons. We’ve had the same one about 35 years, and that’s a lot of real trees that we didn’t waste.

Just how old IS Arlo? This scene looks like it’s out of “A Christmas Story”, except it’s a fake Christmas tree and not a leg-lamp…

Arlo’s turtleneck is next generation.

I hate our aluminum tree in the 50s. Maybe because at that time I started getting clothes for Christmas.

For some reason I thought it was going to be a leg lamp

Arlo was before his time. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” had not even been made yet, and he already had a gold shirt.

On my travels on Friday I passed a fire department who’s sign out front said

Merry Christmas

Please water your tree

So we don’t have to.

We had one in the late 60’s early 70’s and then the color wheel broke so we tossed it……I now see them in stores and it seems they are popular again. I prefer a green tree, but due to allergies it is artificial.

We had an artificial tree when I was little. It must have been a war-time model as if was rather, um, skimpy, maybe? By the time I was seven or eight the paper on the branches had faded to chartreuse. The branches were all attached to the trunk (a dowel about the diameter of a broom handle) with some sort of tape. My dad pulled it out of a tube, banged the bottom on the floor, and all of the branches dropped down. When Christmas was over, Daddy turned it over and dropped the top of the tree on the floor and the branches folded back against the trunk. Slide it back into the tube and stashed it away for next year.

We’ve always bought a live tree, usually a cedar, does not dry out and after Christmas you plant it. When our big yard got too full, we got permission to plant at a local park. Someone, everyone, wants a free tree to plant. Free is the key word.

One question answered. I now know from whom Arlo got the nose.

We never got the silver tree. When I was little my dad always insisted upon a real tree he cut down himself. Sometimes it had pretty pine cones attached to it. After my parents divorced my mom got an artificial green tree she tried to make as green as possible with pine scented spray etc. My Dad moved to a tiny house nearby. It had a little pine scrub growing in the yard and he always strung lights on it. That was his Christmas tree. Merry Christmas and Godspeed Mom and Dad. Though you are both no longer in this world now you are always in my heart.

We’ve had a pre-lit artificial tree for a number of years now. Biggest complaint is that one section of lights quit working and……….it leaves artificial needles in the carpet.

Where to begin…a little history, early artificial Christmas trees were baby bottle brushes put together by a said brushes manufacturer.My mother liked the look of the first aluminum tree so we got one, with all gold globe ornaments and the mandatory color wheel spotlight. She used it for years until the more realistic green brush trees arrived…

I thought my dad was the only one who brought home an aluminum tree with the rotating color wheel light.

Thanks for reviving a good memory, Jimmy!

When we started our life together, both my wife and I wanted the traditional look and smell of a real tree. For several years we had the largest tree our eight foot ceiling could contain, but a neighbor who was a fireman, insisted we could not take the risk with all our kids. At the same time, my mother was tired of her tree, and another neighbor’s “trunk” broke. I inherited both, bought a cedar post for a trunk and drilled holes to combine the slightly different trees, and used it for decades…

Eventually the kids went on their own ways, and, without their help, the two day construction became so much longer I had to switch to the tree in a box model – the old one was in four very large boxes. We now have a “Chicago Slim” model, which the kids hate because its so small, but we only have to move a chair to make enough room for it. It only hold half the ornaments, and that means it is loaded to the gills. Way too much posting, I apologize.

Hah. The artificial vs real debate…. the nice thing about the debate is that NO ONE IS WRONG. Both styles are great.

I like real trees for their scent, their initial beauty, and their “tradition”. I am not fond of the watering, and the dropped needles, and while they are renewable it sometimes feels rather harsh to use them so briefly.

I like artificial trees for their convenience and their reliability. I am not fond of putting them together nor of taking them apart, and miss the “real” odor of pine (the "sticks imbued with the scent are ok, but not really the same).

* * * I always like Arlo’s Dad the few times we have seen him. He reminds me of my own father. And, at least to me, I like the style of dress Arlo’s Dad adopts as well.

My husband’s great-grandparents used one, but the darlings never got the right branches in the right holes, so it was shaped as badly as a real Christmas tree. I miss them so much.

so here I am out in the country within 1/2 mile from all the free trees I’d like and I’m looking a pre-lit plastic one made in a country that doesn’t have the custom. I’ll use my usual excuse, the chain saw won’t start in the cold.

We’re still getting the “real” tree, but I anticipate we’ll succumb to a fake one one day. They have gotten more real like in recent years.

And thus was IKEA born.

There was a Victorian house up the street from us with a beauty parlor on one side. They had a silver tree with the changing light wheel. We would traipse up the street and stand on the sidewalk watching till our feet froze. On our own (real) tree, we had the large colored bulbs of the 1960s, but our mother bought 4 special ones that blinked. We would make sure they were evenly distributed around the tree. Year after year, we looked forward to those 4 flashing bulbs. Blessed times and memories!

“It’ll never catch on.”

We had a cedar in the front yard. We lit it up every year. It got bigger and bigger until it dominated the yard. Daddy finally cut it down.

We had others in the front field. Thieves would cut them down and steal them. Christmas thieves. We didn’t particularly care other than the theft aspect.

TREE or no TREE. HAPPY HOLIDAYS to all!

Judging by little Arlo’s shirt I’d set the year as 1967 of ‘68 and that’s a Star Trek style shirt. The only reason I say that is because I wanted a shirt like that.

Aw, it’s not a leg lamp? I’m disappointed.

I think the colorist screwed up – those should be green trunks/branches

I am Jewish so I grew up without a tree or other Christmas decorations, save a styrofoam Rudolph Reindeer which I kept on the TV.

Husband is Catholic. He says that as long as he can remember back (and he is 66) they had a fake, green tree tree as it is too dangerous to put lights on a real tree.

Now we have 5 trees – the only one set up is the 18 inch one in my teddy bear village as it is in place all year – but even it is not decorated yet. I cleared husband’s weaving supplies out of the living room tonight to start the big, general decorations tree there, tomorrow night. There is a tabletop tree that goes in our studio with only ornaments we have made and ditto in our dining with only Colonial Williamsburg brass ornaments (we are members and get them annually). Lastly is a small (foot tall maybe) beaded tree that I made decades ago with tiny ornaments – some of which I also made. I gave up the little tree in the office after one try – it was decorated with office supplies – we still come across sections of the paper clip chain that was on it.

My dad painted a Scotch Pine with aluminum spray paint. It was okay, but then he tried to store it in the garage until next year.

Arlo is wearing a Star Trek shirt.