This continues the prior post, in which I attempt to transition my family from real Christmas trees to an artificial tree.
In this post, my wife and I hit the local thrift shops to see what artificial Xmas trees were on offer there. This is a good way to see a wide variety of artificial evergreens, side-by-side, in person. We didn’t buy one, which is no surprise. But we learned a lot.
(Unfortunately, I did not think to take pictures, so all the pictures here are fakes — AI-generated from Gencraft.com.)
Takeaways:
1: There is a thriving secondary market for artificial Christmas trees. In one shop, they went so far as to apologize for the limited selection. They’d mostly sold out prior to Thanksgiving, but that they’d be getting fresh stock in over the next month as people in the area “traded up” to a new tree and gave them the old one.
This is helpful not just for buying a used tree, but also for getting rid of one in case I buy something that I end up disliking. Before this, I figured that donating a used fake Christmas tree was like donating trash. But now that I know that thrift shops actively deal in used artificial trees, I have a way to dispose of any potential bad purchase.
2: There are some butt-ugly artificial Christmas trees out there. Even acknowledging all the limits of thrift shopping, we came across several trees where my only reactions were a) I can’t believe somebody sold that as a Christmas tree, and b) I can’t believe somebody bought that as a Christmas tree.
3: The fine detail of the needles matters a lot. Some artificial pine wreaths, in particular, were indistinguishable from real, to me at least. Others just screamed fake. The most obvious difference was specular reflections (shiny spots) on the needles. Broad, flat, shiny needles look like nothing in nature. They look like plastic, full stop. Narrow needles with a dull surface appeared real. In addition, for reasons that escape me, some artificial pine needles were made in shades of green that just aren’t found in nature. (Or, as my wife puts it, they are found in nature, but only on dying trees.)
In any case, with a bunch of different wreaths in a pile, or an array of trees in one corner, some simply jumped out as being fake. Others did a much better job of mimicking real evergreens. And that all boiled down to fairly subtle variations in color, reflectiveness, and shape of the needles.
4: Fake tree technology has evolved over time, for the better. Thrift shops let you see older and modern versions of the same goods, in one place. Old tech trees had removable individual branches that fit into a central trunk, and tended to look only vaguely like a real tree. All the modern trees had branches that are permanently affixed to the central trunk with steel pivots, and in general looked far more realistic.
After seeing a few, it was clear that I didn’t want an old-tech tree with removable branches. Modern trees appear to be significantly better.
4A: I think I finally understand the fashion for having artificial trees that look purposefully artificial. White, say, or metallic-looking. Back in the day, if your options were to have an artificial tree that tried but failed to look real, or to have a purposefully artificial-looking tree, artificial-looking was plausibly the more stylish option.
4B: On a tech side note, the old technology of removable branches meant you could, in theory, put the tree back in its original box. We saw two like that — re-stuffed into the original box — both old-tech trees with removable branches. I’m guessing that’s not typically possible with a modern tree, with permanently attached branches. So modern trees require something to store them in, other than the original box.
4C: Old tech trees with removable branches seem to preclude the possibility of a pre-lit tree (that is, one with built-in lights). So the “pre-lit tree” goes hand-in-hand with the change in the basic technology of how these artificial trees are put together. It’s really only possible once you go to the permanently-attached branches approach found in modern trees.
5: Most of the trees in the thrift shops were pre-lit trees. (That is, trees with the Christmas lights attached.) I’m not sure whether that’s because a) those trees are better sellers originally, or b) those trees break more quickly, or c) people who want the convenience of a pre-lit tree are more likely to “trade up” more frequently.
5B: For sure, the preponderance of pre-lit trees in the thrift shops screws up my ability to find a bargain there. Pre-lit trees have substantially higher original prices compared to plain, un-lit trees. Accordingly, they sell for substantially higher prices in the thrift shops. But since I don’t want a pre-lit tree, all this meant to me is that the typical discount-from-what-I’d-otherwise-purchase-on-Amazon was small. Trees that, for me, appeared functionally equivalent to a an unlit $100-$120 tree new, from Amazon, were on offer for $60 to $70, because they were pre-lit trees.
Conclusion: Buying a tree from Amazon now looks riskier.
Going into this, I figured I could quantify what I wanted in a fake Christmas tree. Height, density of “branch tips”, and so on.
What I learned is that the hard-to-quantify aspects of an artificial evergreen have a big impact on how good it looks. Little details like color, surface finish, and shape of the needles have a big impact on how realistic the tree appears. Some trees and wreaths were instantly and obviously recognizable as artificial. From a good distance. Others were, to my eye, at a reasonable distance, indistinguishable from real evergreens. And it wasn’t necessarily the build quality or the density of the materials. It was that some of the needles just plain looked like plastic.
That’s a problem, because I don’t think there’s any way to quantify that on Amazon. Sure, I can specify a minimum density of branch tips per cubic foot, and so on. But that’s not going to guarantee a realistic-looking tree. Instead, how good the tree will look will depend in large part on those little details of the needles. That’s going to be very hard to judge from a few photos on Amazon, or even from purchasers’ comments.
Now add to the mix all the ugly trees we saw today. Plausibly, once upon a time, each of those was the apple of some purchaser’s eye. At least until they opened the box.
You’d think that would argue for buying locally, but my local selection of un-lit, green, artificial Christmas trees is extremely limited. My local Home Depot has, I think, one that fits that description. My local Ace Hardware has none. I didn’t see anything meeting that description at my local Target. And so on. I’m guessing Amazon and other on-line retail has pretty much chased the low end of the market — where un-lit plain-green trees would be found — out of bricks-and-mortar retail.
It’s not clear what my next rational step would be. Probably, I’m going to gamble on something that’s highly-rated on Amazon, sight-unseen. And if that turns out to be a dog, then off it goes to the thrift shop, post-Christmas, to make way for another try next year.
