Post #2070: Artificial Christmas tree.

Turns out, buying an artificial tree was the perfect manly chore.

Equal parts toting heavy objects and questionable taste.

A manly task at Walmart

I assume the manufacturer of this tree is unaware of the history of Donner Pass. But it would be funnier if they weren’t.

In any case, there’s no such thing as a Donner fir. You may be thinking of Douglas. No relation. Donner isn’t even a brand name, or the name of the manufacturer. It’s just the name they gave to this particular thing.

Like Ikea furniture. Dønnür.

And yet, funny name or not, this was the tree for me. Based on extensive prior homework (see end of post), I decided that:

I want a traditional fake tree, one that is trying to pass for real.
I want an un-lit tree, for a whole lot of reasons, starting with durability.
I wanted a good density of branch tips and/or “fullness”.
I needed to see that tree in person, eyeball-to-needle — see Lessons from Thrift Shopping at end of post.

When I sifted the entirety of pseudo-sylvania through that set of filters, out dropped Walmart as my only choice. Unlit trees are the bottom of the market, price-wise, so it’s hard to find those locally, period. And then, to find one that’s apparently-well-made, based on its branch-tip density, that made it well worth the trip.

As a bonus, I know Walmart. Couldn’t be easier. Walk in, pay, walk out. A one-and-done.

Until I saw this on the box:

And that’s when it became a manly task.

Upon seeing this warning, would it have been smarter to have walked back to the front of the store and picked up a shopping cart to move this with? Of course it would have. Did I do that? Of course not. The box had plastic handles on it. I managed to haul it to the register and out the door without injuring myself or bystanders.

Heavy lifting combined with a total disregard for common sense or personal safety. How could I pass that up? That’s what made it a manly task.

It’s an economically efficient Frankentree

The better-looking artificial tree needles cost more to make than the older-style, square-cut-strips-of-green-plastic “needles”.

And yet, the details of the tree are kind of a visual blur. If you used the expensive needles throughout, it would be mostly wasted. Nobody notices what’s on the inner branches of the tree.

As a result, the low-to-mid-range tree market has coalesced around the Frankentree. It’s an artificial Xmas tree that, in effect, combines tree branches from different species of evergreens. The branch tips are made of the good-looking but more expensive materials, while the greenery on the interior of the tree is most old-school square-cut-plastic-strip pine needles.

But even then, this tree does an excellent job of hiding the shininess of the plastic. As shown above, if you shine a bright light at a raking angle, you can see that the flat plastic needles of the “cheap” parts of the tree are actually micro-textured. They were made from plastic sheeting that has an almost-invisble stippling pressed into it. The stippling is not visible in normal light, at a normal distance. Instead, it all blends together to give just the right surface sheen to the “needles”. They are neither completely shiny (which screams artificial) nor completely matte. It’s a good imitation of the reflection off the wax cuticle of a real pine needle.

The Dønnür is, apparently, the end result of some fairly high-tech engineering. Up close, no part of it is a good replica for anything actually found in nature. At mid-scale, the different needle shapes on the same tree is jarring.

But after a couple of glasses of eggnog, from a distance, it is, objectively, not an ugly tree.

I’ve done worse.

Mostly-fluffed is good enough.

Assembly is idiot-proof. The central pole (trunk) comes in three sections. The branches are stiff wires crudely hinged to the central pole. The greenery is on flexible wires, attached to the branches.

You have to bend each flexible greenery-covered wire away from the branch, a process known as “fluffing” the tree.

My biggest problem with “fluffing” was expecting to end up with a fist full of dry pine needles every time I grabbed a branch. Because that’s what would have happened if I’d tried the “fluff” maneuver on a real tree. I had to get over a life-long aversion to doing anything that would knock the needles off your Christmas tree.

Instead, it’s just tedious work. So we did a few minutes here and there, and after a while, the tree was adequately fluffy. I have no doubt that somewhere on this tree, some branch remains un-fluffed.

I care not. If it escapes my notice, let it remain unfluffed.

Harder to fool your nose than your eyes

I tried a couple of artificial-pine-fragrance-things last year, and they did not pass the smell test. Not quite as bad as Little Trees, but not much above the Pine-Sol level of pine fragrance.

So my wife is going to pick up some sort of fragrant pine greenery, and that will be our source of pine scent.

The upshot is that we still will not have achieved a fully-artificial Christmas tree. Oddly enough, for us, its easier to fool the eye than to fool the nose.

Conclusion

My homework paid off.

Out of the welter of choices for an artificial tree, I ended up with one option — this tree. It was undoubtedly made in China. It’s almost surely not recyclable. But if it’ll last a few years, it should be no more environmentally damaging than the equivalent string of real trees.

It’s less mess and less hassle. Less expense.

After a lifetime of real trees, it was time to make the switch.