I moved out of my parents house in June of 2015 into an apartment with my fiancee and believe it or not, we have not had to pay for a Christmas tree yet. The first year I was given my Aunt Rosie'sold Christmas tree. Slightly similar to the artificial trees they sell these days except this tree was entirely plastic, with the exception of the actual inner part being made of steel. So the needles and the branches were all plastic, but the inner part of the tree (hopefully you know what I mean) was steel. When assembling this tree, it went together much differently than today's trees. Much more time consuming as well to put this together. You start with put the inner part of the tree into the stand (also plastic). The stand didn't have any balancing screws in it, so wherever you set it up is pretty much the balance you get, unless you put a magazine under it or something to balance it out. Once these are put together, you had to quite literally put together each branch individually, where today's tree you just have 3 or 4 parts to stack on top of each other, and the stands have screws to balance these out. Plus, since the branches are made of plastic, you can't exactly bend to shape them like today's trees. It's pretty much what you see is what you get. During assembly and while taking it apart after Christmas, the tree lost a lot of needles. I also poked myself a few times while disassembling it as the side of the branch that goes into the tree are a bit pokey sharp. I tried storing it in a garage bag, but every single one of those branches poked through. As much as I hated to throw out my Aunt Rosie's Christmas tree, I had to. Most of the needles had fallen off and the tree was just too old to maintain a proper assembly.
So I asked my parent's for their old artificial tree since we needed a new one. Their old tree was a pre-lit tree, meaning that it had come with lights already on it when they had bought it. The problem? None of the lights worked anymore. My mom told my that the middle lights were the only ones that were burnt out, but when I got it home, assembled it, and plugged it in....none of the lights were working. I thought to myself, "should I go out and buy a brand new tree without the lights now, or do I take these burnt out lights off." I decided to do the latter. This was no easy task. I discovered that there were hundreds of these tiny plastic clips keeping the lights attached to the tree. Those plastic clips that are commonly used to keep bread shut in the bag? Picture those, but smaller, and tougher. I had to use my fingers alone to remove hundreds of the small plastic clips from that tree. It was no picnic, but it had to be done. My fingers are definitely going to be sore for a few days. I had to cut the lights off here and there too and at times there was too big a trail of lights to maneuver through the tree. It took me about 6 hours and 2 hours the next morning to remove all the plastic clips and lights from the tree.
It is cheaper to buy a tree unlit than pre-lit. Not sure why you would even want to buy a pre-lit Christmas tree. Sure, it might save you time from putting lights on the tree the first couple years. Then after those first couple years your lights burn out and then your stuck with a tree with lights that don't work and you probably don't wanna go back to the store and spend another $200 on another tree. I'm sure you also realize that it's very difficult to replace a burnt out bulb as you have to find the one that's burnt out. Not sure if they've fixed this in recent years.
Anyway, I'm off to bed. Gotta figure out where to put the stockings tomorrow and then put all the Christmas decoration storage boxes back in the garage.
God Bless
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