Yep, I’m late on this debate. But we just put up our Christmas tree, and my husband and I were talking about it.

For our situation, the answer is obvious. The artificial tree makes more sense because we already own it. We’ve had it for 3-4 years, and it just makes the most sense to continue using it.

Ours is a cheapie. He used to work at Home Depot, and caught it on clearance for $9. Can’t beat the price.

But when you don’t already have an artificial one, I’d say go real. Tree farms keep growing them, and if you have a fairly local tree farm, the transportation isn’t that bad a thing.

My favorite Christmas tree was the one we had the first two years of our marriage. It was a live tree, in a pot. We didn’t succeed in keeping it alive, though. But that was my favorite way to have a ‘green’ Christmas tree. We’d hoped to someday plant it in a backyard when we owned a home.

If you choose a real, cut tree, one of the key things to do is make sure it gets recycled when you’re done with it. That’s easy in my area; there are a variety of drop off points designated. We’ll see places where trees get stacked for a couple weeks after Christmas, then they get picked up.

Once you’ve picked your tree, you can keep focusing on keeping what’s on it and under it as green as possible.