The holidays: it's all about the tree.(THE LAST LAUGH)(keeping a Christmas tree)

Living in Wisconsin amid the birch and pine trees puts on a lot of pressure during the holiday season concerning the apparatus selected to hold one's ornaments.

The "blue" state that delivers the tree to the White House some years, Wisconsin provides 1.8 million trees to households in 48 states.

There's nothing like the smell of evergreen during the holidays, and in Wisconsin that usually comes from a real tree. Families can head out to a cut-your-own tree farm, where a hay wagon with jingle bells pulls you over a snow-packed field until you spot the perfect tree.

Or you can just go to a tree lot and choose between the old-fashioned, short-needled Balsam, or the long-needled red pine or the wispy-needled white pine, or the popular new mid-length Fraser fir.

Those less traditional can save themselves a lot of hassle, expense and clean-up by going with a fake tree. Some look just like the real thing; others look like they're made of green toilet brushes. Some are metallic, and last year's new fiber optic trees had changing iridescent colors.

Ghosts of trees past

In my childhood home, we always had a real tree and it was always in one of two spots in the living room.