The pampered, well-traveled Christmas tree

The lovely selection of Christmas trees at your local stand traveled a long way to grace your home.

Willamette Valley in Oregon is one of the prime locations for Christmas tree farms, according to Atlas Obscura. Its naturally moist and fertile ground coupled with a long growing season makes it the number one producer of trees in the world.

It takes helicopters to get the trees out of the tree farms, which are planted with thousands of trees on thousands of acres, mostly without roads. From the helicopters to trucks, the trees are bound, chilled and readied for trips by truck or even ships bound for global destinations.

Before they start their travels, Christmas trees have spent 10 years on tree farms. Your beautiful conical shaped tree didn’t happen by accident. Instead, each tree on a tree farm has been shaped, inspected, and rated for its shape and beauty.

For the environmentally conscious, the question arises each year, what is better for the environment: artificial trees or real?

Artificial trees are much simpler to buy and clean up, but the best-looking ones require substantial time to arrange and fluff the many branches. At some point, plastic trees end up in the landfills. In 2010, the New York Times reported that an artificial tree would have to be used for two decades or more to be better for the environment than a new fresh-cut tree each year.

The American Christmas Tree Association reported in 2011 that artificial trees used over several years have, ultimately, a similar environmental footprint to having a new fresh-cut tree each year.

Meanwhile, real trees have that lovely aroma and the romance of the season, but you have to pick one in the cold, drag it home and clean up needles for a month.

To keep real trees looking their best, you also have to keep them cool and watered. Fresh-cut trees contribute to the environment during the decade they take to grow, by increasing oxygen in the environment. Once they’re cut, that benefit ends, although if these trees are composted after use, they put nutrients back into the ground as they decompose.

It is possible to purchase a live tree, and if it is harvested with a sufficient root ball, the tree might survive to be planted outside. Cut trees cannot be replanted.