Shopping Blog

My wife and I are what the young people refer to as snowbirds. We used to live in Albany until I retired and we decided that we were going to leave the snowy mountains, Christmas Trees and cold temperatures behind. We sold the house, bought a condo in Palm Beach that we live in for most of the year and then we rent an RV to drive around the country for two months. It’s been quite a change in lifestyle.

Our first Christmas in Florida, I realized that real Christmas Trees were going to be hard to come by down there. I did find companies that were willing to ship nice ones from Maine, but the cost was atrocious, and then there was the issue of how we would dispose of the thing once Christmas was over; our condo isn’t exactly set up for disposing of dead trees. My wife took matters into her own hands and started looking for Artificial Christmas Trees. She and her friends spent weeks shopping at department stores, speciality shops and home design centers. For the most part, the trees she found were pretty disappointing, with branches that looked like fuzzy green bottle scrubbers. She found some White Christmas Trees that she thought might look good on our balcony but I nixed that idea; if I couldn’t have a real Spruce, I was at least going to hold out for something that looked like the real thing. We finally tracked down the ultimate in Artificial Christmas Trees online at www.christmastreemarket.com (I think their phone number was 888-55-BALSAM if you don’t have web access).

This is a company that understands when people give up buying real Christmas Trees for whatever reason (might be convenience, environmental concerns, allergies, concerns about fire hazards, or to save money over the long term), they don’t want to replace them with something that looks fake. People want Artificial Christmas Trees that look like the real thing. We were able to choose from trees that had been modeled after individual species of evergreen, accurate right down to overall shape, needles and branch appearance- not just generic “Christmas Trees.” There were redwood pines, blue spruce, fraser fir, royal douglas fir, balsam fir and other realistic representations to choose from in a range of sizes and even the open to buy slim versions that fit in restricted spaces. They do have White Christmas Trees too, if that’s what you’d prefer.

We bought a seven and a half foot tall blue spruce, pre-lit with 700 clear lights. The tree is in our living room now and it looks incredible. Our neighbors had no idea it wasn’t real and it was easy to set up. Plus I didn’t have to bother with stringing up all the lights. No dropped needles, no watering, no worries about drying out or being a fire hazard, so we can leave it up until after new Year’s if we want. Try doing that with real Christmas Trees!

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