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<\/a><\/p>\nFor most of my life I was adamant about having a real tree — preferably one I cut down myself. I was such a live-tree snob I wouldn’t even speak the words “artificial Christmas tree.” Instead, I’d call those abominations … other things I can’t type.<\/p>\n
Then I spotted my present super-funky and super-fake tree half off at the local general store just after the *&^%$#@! federal government announced a tax on real Christmas trees<\/em>. Remember that? Right before Christmas 2011? Right in the middle of the Great Recession?<\/p>\n I was so grossed out that I blogged about the tax not just once<\/a>, not just twice<\/a> (after the PR guy for the National Christmas Tree Association informed me the thing wasn’t a tax but merely a harmless little mandatory “checkoff”), but a third time<\/a> after one of the tree farmers promoting the tax kindly gave me a long, detailed answer to my query. Our resident economics and market maven Silver, also added a strong rebuttal to the tree taxers. (You’ll find that linked from those 2011 posts, but I’m not sure the link to Silver’s fisking still works. It didn’t work for me when I prepped this post.)<\/p>\n Ever since then … no live trees for me. And that’s despite the fact that the Obama administration caught such hell (or rather because “right-wing bloggers inaccurately characterized the newly instituted checkoff as a Christmas tree tax”) that it took them another four years<\/a> to impose what Snopes.com still<\/em> insists is NOT a tax<\/a>. <\/p>\n ‘Cause, you know, even though the fedgov imposed it and even though unwilling tree farmers and ultimately their customers are forced to pay it, the money goes not to the Treasury, but to the Christmas tree growers who used their pull with the feds to force it on their less willing competitors. That doesn’t sound anything like a tax, now does it?<\/p>\n Funny how a $0.15 fee and a few pages of new regulations can still generate mental steam seven years later. But it’s not the money; in this case it actually is the principle of the thing — and the Orwellian BS about it being not-a-tax. Then, too, it was the final straw that prompted my favorite local Christmas tree grower close its operation.<\/p>\n Ahem. ‘Nuff of that. These days, there are wild varieties of funky, artsy, clever Christmas “trees” that look nothing like the plasticky faux-live or ghastly silver artificial trees of the past. <\/p>\n I’m happy with my resplendently, refulgently, candescently phony tree-in-a-box and glad to have it glowing again this year. Take that, you tree taxers!<\/p>\n —–<\/p>\n My ornaments are old friends, and are mostly stuffed animals. Or stuffed-non-animals. Or non-stuffed animals:<\/p>\n