Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for December 11, 2023

Always liked a real tree but the worry about needles is only a fraction of the worries.

I can remember when aluminum trees were stylish.

Here’s another thing that may be much harder to pull off if they move to a condo.

Looks like Arlo caught himself an eight-footer.

Sticker shock at the nursery has given me pause to consider an artificial tree. An over 30% increase from last year.

Set it up outside and then get a phony baloney.

Since this isn’t their first Christmas together, you would think that they would have had this particular conversation a long time ago.

I was so glad when my parents finally bought a fake tree. The mess from the real trees would persist till the summer, trying to get all the needles out of the rug or it seemed like it.

Does Janis’s sweater appears fuller?

The artificial ones drop plastic needles on the floor… and they don’t have the wonderful smell of a fresh, real tree.

Sorry to be the party pooper here but artificial trees also drop “needles”. We’d find them in May or even June. One year I discovered how that happened. The paper thin “needles” would find a way to get wedged under the baseboards and then come out later.

Part of the satisfaction of Christmas is the accomplishment of putting up the tree. That has been diminished in modern times with pre-lit fold-up trees. There are even pre-decorated trees.

So in the next day or two we will see a happy self-satisfied Arlo.

When I was a kid back in the 19th century my family had a metal stand just like Arlo’s. We live in an area where Christmas trees are grown commercially, and they’re pretty pricey even here.

One year Hubby bought an artificial tree. When we started to put it together, we discovered it was too tall to fit in the living room, so we put it in the sunroom. It is so big and heavy that we decided to leave it there. I think we’re going to sell it with the house.

That’s one of the things the husband has to clean up.

So many years ago when I was little, my brother and his friend (they were teen agers then) from work came in with a Pink Flocked Christmas tree. That memory will always last with me. I always told my brother and his family how much I loved that pink Christmas tree. Last year my wife bought me a pink ceramic tree in honor of my late brother.

Artificial trees look much more realistic these …the smell of a real tree makes the effort worthwhile.

Four Christmases ago we got a real deal on a Balsam Hill fake tree. Marked down after Christmas from $500 (!!!) to about $200 it has been what we hoped it would be. Reasonably realistic, it is in two sections with pre-installed lighting. We have had it for two Christmases now and feel it was good at the price, but would not have been so good at full price.

The real trees were problematic. Sometimes they would dry out in the week before Christmas regardless what additives we put in the water. Worse, the dogs and cats would insist on drinking out of the watering stand, defeating all our attempts to keep them out (especially the cats). I was the only person in the household capable of even helping to wrestle with the real trees – that was a drag!

my artificial tree is now leaving pine needles when I pull it out of the box

There….she agreed!

Why are you scowling Arlo? You don’t like the smell of fresh cut pine?

When I saw the first panel, I thought Arlo was either doing some rigorous pruning of the hedge or trying to pull a racoon out of it. I was seeing perspective where it wasn’t.

Always had a real tree until we moved to the country a number of years ago. The nearest fire station is 8 miles away and it’s too much of a risk.

Slightly off-topic, but not far off: Have you looked at the “arloandjanis dot com” “classic” site today? It’s still labeled “Maintenance message,” but there’s a one-panel comic there! (One-panel?! in A&J?!) And a version of the long-standing “coming soon!” message…in French! (I think…) After many months of seeing nothing but “Yes, really truly, this site will be running soon!” I’ve just been checking it every Sunday, and it hasn’t changed in a LONG time. Anyone know what’s happening? Has it been site-jacked? Can’t wait until tomorrow!

We’ve got an ARTIFICIAL tree that’s so old, it’s beginning to shed its plastic needles.

Pines are rarely used as Xmas trees, and the tree in this strip looks nothing like a pine. Most Xmas trees are balsam fir.

How about this: A Christmas wreath (with lights) on the door, no tree, a bit of snow on Christmas Day, cups of egg nog and hot chocolate, family, friends and then, bed!

Haven’t killed a tree for Christmas in decades.

One of our sons is allergic to the mold that grows on evergreens so we switched to artificial trees. I’m a big fan of artificial: safer, easier to handle, and far less messy.

But they make such lovely fires.

(Not that fires are apt to be as common with cool light LEDs.)

" I don’t like pine needles on the floor." Church.

My family still has the same artificial tree decades later. You never have to water it, clean up the pine needles and you get to keep it around for a long time.

You get pine needles on the floor with a fake tree, too, and they’re like Easter basket grass: they randomly show up years after the tree was ever used.

I decided the last time I stuffed a wet xmas tree in the back of my station wagon that it would be the last time I stuffed a wet xmas tree in anything. I have not regretted this decision.

We stopped having real trees when my son got diagnosed with asthma. He would get sick every Christmas season and we had no clue. After he grew up and left the house, both mine and my wife’s asthma got worse, so no real trees. Don’t miss the hassle or expense. Nowadays in our small apartment we keep a little tree on a table year round and light it at Thanksgiving (LED Xmas lights are the best). BTW, helpful pine sap tip (we also have a lake cabin surrounded by pine trees) – if you get sap all over your skin, apply cooking oil to the affected area and scrub, then scrub with a liquid soap (you’ll mess up a bar soap). If it’s on your clothes, apply oil to get rid of the sap then No More Tears shampoo or Grease Relief to get rid of the oil.

I loved going the the local Christmas tree lots on cold nights when I was a child. The flocking tent was always a special place to peek into, but I still can’t imagine anyone really wanting a flocked tree.

We didn’t like pine needles in our dachshunds’ digestive systems.

When I was growing up, my family’s Christmas trees, whether live or cut, were decorated exclusively with blue and white lights (the old pointy bulbs, where if one went out, the whole string was out, and good luck finding the bad bulb). I hated having just blue and white, as I always preferred the warmer colors (I was finally able to have a single orange light for myself). I don’t know why it was this way, and years later my father just pleaded ignorance when I asked about it, saying “He!!, I don’t know, that was your Mother’s doing”. I always highlight the red, orange, and yellow lights now. Incidentally, today’s LED lights are vastly better than any of the old incandescent bulbs and mini lights!

When we had sun storm back in the 80’s I was able to do a 3 way from lancaster CA, Sydney Aust and Fairbanks AK. Still got the QSR cards some where. hy gain 5 65 foot peaked to 9 watts.

Needles on the floor were the biggest reason we switched to a good quality artificial tree… and we live where it’s easy to harvest your own spruce or pine.

In reply to a comment earlier I found an extended bit about Arlo’s Dad and his aluminum tree. Begins on the 17th and ends just before that Christmas. I do recommend pushing through to the 26th for a rare JJ visit.

https://www.gocomics.Com/arloandjanis/2018/12/17

Or get the kind of tree that doesn’t drop needles…white pine, red pine, Douglas Fir.

About 30 years ago my mother gave me her old tree skirt which even longer than that was her felt poodle skirt that she wore in high school

I am Jewish so other than the tree in our school classroom which the class would make ornaments for & decorate (a real tree) using opened paperclips as hangers I had no knowledge of what to do.

Husband, who is Catholic, grew up with an artificial tree since he was a boy back in the 1950s. According to him, his parents & grandparents – “if one has a live tree they cannot put lights on it”. So we have an artificial tree (our second one in 40+ years). it is stored in our basement and we carry it upstairs section by section & set it up in the living room.

We also have 3 other trees. One yearI realized that we had too many bear ornaments on the tree. It happened that we bought a new tree that year. I had him make a stand for the top tree-shaped piece of the old tree and it was setup in “the teddys’ bears room”. He liked it so much that the next year he bought a small tree instead of the top of the old one and set it up in the upstairs hall instead. (It has since grown to a year round teddy village with the ornaments on for Christmas and the bear figures who live in the village are changed 11 times a year (Jan split between Dec and Feb). It is a silly thing – but in the early days of Covid it kept us going to be able to “go somewhere”. At that point the village was decorated for same – nurse bears, doctor bears, police bears and a bear delivering food were the only bears out in the village – oh, and the accountant bear was setup in his popup “outdoor” office under the (Christmas) town tree as of February 2021 as tax preparers were considered to be priority to be out and about. (It may sound crazy and we know it is, but it kept us sane during the worst of Covid and is a lot of fun to setup and see.)

I have another tree in our dining room (decorated as 18th century tavern room) even though the tree is incorrect for the period which has brass Colonial Williamsburg ornaments on it. And yet another tree in our studio which only has items we have made.

Nothing says Christmas like watching a tree slowly die in your house.