This post continues my attempt to transition my family from real Christmas trees to an artificial tree.
Between this, and my two just-prior Christmas tree posts, I think I’ve finally gotten fully up to speed on artificial trees. Today I summarize what I learned from a trip to Home Depot, and an article from the NY Times Wirecutter.
Wirecutter’s top seven artificial trees were all “fir” or “spruce”. No pine. That’s because they use branch tips made out of relatively expensive molded polyethylene to provide a realistic simulation of fir or spruce branches, not the cheaper metal-and-plastic-PVC-strip branch tips meant to mimic pine trees.
(Why no pines? Fir and spruce have individual short, thick needles directly attached to the branch. By contrast, pines have bundles of multiple long, thin needles. I’m guessing that the molded PE technology works for the former, but not the latter. Thus, my provisional rule: All high-end fake Christmas trees are now spruces or firs. Not because people prefer them, but because those are the only ones that can currently be manufactured with the hyper-realistic molded polyethylene process.)
This cost-versus-appearance tradeoff is what leads to the “Frankentree” (below). It’s now common for manufacturers to use the cheap, not-so-realistic-looking square-cut “pine” PVC needles on the tree interior, twisted in wires like a bottle brush. And then add the more-realistic-looking molded polyethylene (spruce/fir) branch tips at the outer ends of the branches.
And thus we end up with a symbol of goodwill toward mankind that is entirely determined by the interaction of plastics technology and market forces. Apparently, the fact that it looks like a tree, but when examined closely is deeply and disturbingly unlike any tree actually found in nature, is irrelevant.
In the end, what I mostly learned from this last deep dive is that artificial trees basically creep me out. The dominance of the Frankentree in the mid-range market was the plastic straw that broke the Bakelite camel’s back.
With that in mind, I’ve bought a fake tree that’s obvious fake. Silver, as an homage to the tin-foil trees of my youth. An indoor Christmas decoration, not some PVC strips (or even molded polyethylene needles) trying to look like an impossible pine-fir-spruce tree.
Home Depot stocks Frankentrees
After looking over the marketplace for artificial Christmas trees (Post #1901), and checking out my local thrift shops (Post #1902), my next stop had to be Home Depot.
Home Depot used to stock a mind-boggling array of Christmas … eh … stuff. Lots and lots of big plastic things to sit on your lawn. To the point where, in the distant past, I used it as a kid-friendly pre-Christmas destination. I’d take the kids out to see the Christmas kitsch. They loved it. I’m sure they had no idea what “kitsch” meant.
Home Depot has definitely cut back their Christmas stuff over the past decade or so. They’re down to lights, ornaments, a few lawn doodads, and half-a-dozen artificial trees.
That’s where I found a Frankentree. I was taking pictures to share with my wife, and I realized something was not right about the tree I was looking at. From a distance, it appeared to be a … spruce (?), but up close it was clearly stitched together from many different tree species.
This tree mixed (at least) three different types of needled evergreens. Apparently the manufacturer was not the least bit bothered that the tree was completely unnatural. Upon inspection, several of the trees on the floor at Home Depot used this same mixing of different species.
It’s a realistic-looking yet fundamentally unnatural evergreen. Why did they do that?
Wirecutter highlights fake fir
Wirecutter (owned by the NY Times) rates various types of products and services. Their annual article on artificial Christmas trees is apparently one of their most popular.
I learned a few things from that article. You can, in fact, pay well over $1K for a fake Christmas tree. You should expect to pay several hundred dollars for an acceptable-looking tree. All of the trees Wirecutter chose were either pre-lit or “flocked” with artificial snow, neither of which I wanted.
In the end, what jumped off the page is that all of the trees Wirecutter liked were marketed as fir or spruce. That struck me as odd, as pine trees are commonly sold as Christmas trees. And the overwhelming majority of fake Christmas trees I’d seen to date appeared to be modeling pines.
Why were none of the seven Wirecutter winners in the pine family?
I thought back to my Home Depot trip, and the penny dropped.
Fake tree tech has changed yet again. The flat, square-cut PVC needles of the fake trees of yesteryear are a thing of the past. Today’s high-end trees use a far-more-realistic-looking fir or spruce arrangement of the needles.
These “fir” trees appear to be made using a completely different technology, compared to the flat-needled PVC-strip “pine” trees. Based on some of the Home Depot descriptions, those spruce/fir branch tips are made of “molded PE” (polyethylene), not the flat square-cut bottle-brush strips of PVC that are used in lower-end trees.
But that greater realism comes at a higher cost. An economically efficient tree would combine the cheaper, older, less realistic tech with the more expensive, newer, more realistic tech. It would only use those expensive molded PE branch tips where they matter, and use the cheap stuff for filler.
And so was born the Frankentree, as observed at Home Depot above. It’s the tree equivalent of wood-veneer furniture. It’s a good-looking shell of molded PE tips over a core of cheap square-cut PVC bottle-brush branches.
Even weirder, to me, Wirecutter isn’t at all bothered by Frankentrees. At least one of their top picks turns out to be a mix of spruce and pine needles. Or whatever those are. Clearly from two different species, per the picture of that recommended tree on the Home Depot website. Wirecutter notes the mix of materials, but doesn’t even mention that such a tree never existed in nature.
Conclusion: Bah, humbug. The market for artificial Christmas trees.
Bearing in mind that I was looking for an un-lighted green tree, then, leaning heavily on the Wirecutter article, here’s what you can get for a six or seven foot artificial tree.
- >$1000: Mostly molded PE fir/spruce branch tips, lighted.
- ~$500: Molded PE fir/spruce over flat-cut PVC needle core, lighted.
- ~$150: Flat-cut PVC needles, high density of branch tips (~2000 tips/6 foot tree).
- ~$100: Flat-cut PVC needles, low density of branch tips (under 1000 tips/6 foot tree).
- ~$10: Used old-tech (separate branches) tree in a box (local thrift store).
Wirecutter more-or-less stated what I’ve been slowly figuring out: No artificial trees actually look real once you get within about six feet of them. Some are realistic from a distance. Above, that would be the $500 and up trees, mostly.
But now, in addition, the most realistic fake trees combine (simulations of) different species, in the same tree. And everybody seems to consider this normal.
The upshot is that in order to get a realistic evergreen, economics and plastic technology dictate that I must buy a Frankentree, fundamentally unlike anything found in nature.
That’s the point where I’ve more-or-less lost the thread. What am I looking for again? What’s my conclusion?
Bottom line is that I opted for none of the above. I went in the other direction entirely. I searched Amazon for the simplest, cheapest silver artificial tree I could find. The answer was a pop-up tinsel tree. It doesn’t even remotely resemble a tree, other than being vaguely skinny-Christmas-tree outline.
No fluffing the branches. No finding a place to store it. The plastic and metal parts separate completely, making it feasible to recycle most of the weight of this two-pound artificial Xmas tree.
Basically, it’s a convenient piece of decor around which we can pile the Christmas loot. Isn’t that the essence of a modern Christmas tree?
