I grew up with real and did real when we were first married but I used to come home for a month after Christmas and after coming home to a dead tree we went to fake. Plus sine stay up longer
Never had a real one, but I love the smell! I like to put mine up right after Thanksgiving, too, so it's artificial for me. I do like a real wreath, though, for the front door.
Like so many of the others, growing up the tree was always real. On my own and after marriage it was artificial. For our first three years of marriage the artificial tree was actually a ceramic one my husband's mother made. That never seemed like a Christmas tree to me so I eagerly awaited our first child's second Christmas to be able to push for something that looked like a tree.
The last real one I had made me decide not to have another. I was vacuuming up needles for at least ten years afterwards. Those little needles burrowed down into our carpet and kept creeping out little by little. lol When I miss the wonderful smell I make a small arrangement with fresh branches.
I had one artificial tree that people would go touch because they didn't believe it was fake.
Real - always. We had decided one year to get an artificial one, and the kids were ok with it. . . but a friend was thinning out his patch and gave us a real tree. . . my oldest started dancing around singing - "it's really gonna be Christmas, cause we have a TREE!"
Even though the kids are all grown and flown now. . . I still do a real tree every year.