Twenty-four years I strung lights on a bare tree. Untangle four strings, test the bulbs, find the one dead spot, wind them through the branches, step back, notice the bald patch on the left side, and start over. That was a Saturday afternoon gone, every November, and I did it without complaint because that is what you did. Three Novembers ago I bought a hykolity 7.5 ft prelit tree, and this coming Christmas will be its fourth season in the front window of our house in Zanesville.
I am not going to tell you an artificial tree fools anybody. It does not smell like anything, the needles are plastic, and I know it. What I will tell you is that the hinged design takes the worst part of December, the setup, and cuts it down to something I can finish on a Friday evening with the radio on. Here are the ten reasons it is easier, roughly in the order I noticed them.
The setup I wish I had bought ten Novembers sooner
7.5 ft tall, 1,450 branch tips, 450 warm white LED lights already on the branches, hinged sections and a metal stand in the box.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →The lights are already on it, so you get your afternoon back
Four hundred and fifty warm white LED lights come already wound through the branches. Not coiled in a bag for you to deal with, on the tree, where they belong. That first November I plugged it in and stood there feeling slightly cheated out of a job I had hated for two decades. There is no dead bulb to hunt down and no string to talk myself into throwing away. I still remember the moment the front window lit up and I realized I had nothing left to do but hang ornaments.
Hinged sections open like a book instead of a puzzle
The branches are hinged, so they fold down flat for storage and swing back out when you set the tree up. My old bare tree had branches you pushed into holes, and I spent part of every December hunting for the one that came loose. With hinges there is nothing to lose and nothing to sort. You open the sections, the shape is basically already there, and you are not standing in the middle of the rug holding a bag of parts trying to work out which piece goes on top. That is the whole reason I went looking at a hykolity tree in the first place, and it is the reason I would buy another one.
One trip up the basement stairs, not four
The whole tree lives in the box it arrived in, and that box goes on a shelf in our unfinished basement with the rest of the Christmas things. In November Gary carries up one box. Before this he carried up the bare tree in a bag, two bins of lights, and the extension cords I needed because there was never an outlet where I wanted one. Then in January he carried all of it back down. Cutting that to a single trip sounds like a small thing until you are 62 and the stairs are steep.
The metal stand holds it steady in the window
The stand comes in the box, which sounds obvious until you have bought something and found out the stand was sold separately. It is metal, it sits flat on the floor, and the tree has not leaned once in three seasons, including the winter our front window took a draft every time the porch door opened. I put one hand on the trunk the first evening to check it, and then I stop thinking about it until January. The hykolity tree is listed as indoor only, which suits us fine, because ours has never been anywhere but that front window.
Fluffing is the only slow part, and 1,450 tips are why it looks full
Forty minutes, roughly, is what I spend pulling the tips outward and shaping the branches so there are no flat spots facing the street. This hykolity tree has 1,450 PVC tips, and that number is the difference between a tree that reads as full and one that reads as sparse no matter how many ornaments you pile on. I do that part myself, usually with a mug of tea going cold on the end table, and then I am done. Forty minutes once a year is a trade I will make every time.
It is sized for a real living room, not a catalog photo
Fifty-four inches across and 90 inches tall is what the listing says, and that is what it measures. Our living room is not large. The tree stands in the front window and you can still walk past it to the stairs without turning sideways. I have seen trees in a store that looked reasonable on the floor and then ate the whole room once they were opened up at home. This one fits the space we actually have, which is the only space I am decorating.
You can hang ornaments the same evening you start
Because nothing has to be strung first, the tree goes from basement box to decorated in one night. I set aside the Friday after Thanksgiving. Gary brings the box up in the morning, I open the sections and shape the tips in the afternoon, and after supper I hang the ornaments. By nine o'clock the window is lit and the room feels like December. That first year I kept waiting for the part where it got difficult, and it never arrived.
The branches are listed as flame resistant, and I still unplug it
The listing says flame resistant, and the lights are LED, which run cooler than the old glass bulbs I used to burn my fingers on. I am not going to pretend that makes a plastic tree with electric lights on it something you leave running while you sleep. It plugs into one outlet behind the tree, and I unplug it before I go up to bed, same as I always did. The difference is that I am no longer also worrying about a string of lights I wrapped myself twenty years ago.
January takes twenty minutes
This is the part nobody tells you about a prelit tree. Taking it down is faster than putting it up. I unplug it, lift the ornaments off, fold the hinged branches back down, and the sections go into the box the way they came out. No unwinding. No deciding whether the string that half worked is worth keeping another year. Twenty minutes on the first weekend of January and that corner of the living room is empty again. My old routine ate an afternoon and left me finding stray hooks in the carpet until March.
Fourth season, and it still looks like the first
This coming Christmas will be the tree's fourth. Every light still comes on when I plug it in, the hinges still fold the way they should, and nothing has cracked or shed on the floor. I have owned decorations that were lovely in year one and embarrassing by year three, and I have learned to tell the difference between something built to last and something built to photograph well. This one has been carried up and down a flight of stairs three times now and it has not complained once.
I bought it because untangling lights took a whole afternoon. What I did not expect was that January would take twenty minutes.
What I'd Skip
If you are standing in a store wondering what else you need to go with a prelit tree, my honest answer is most of it. I would skip the extra light strings entirely, because the tree already has 450 warm white LED lights on it and more just means more to take off in January. I would skip the oversized tree skirt if your floor is carpet, because mine never sat flat and I gave up on it. And I would skip anything taller than seven and a half feet unless you have the ceiling and the patience to match, because the taller the tree, the longer the fluffing takes. The one thing I would not skip is a proper ornament box with dividers. That is the other half of January, and I spent years finding cracked ornaments in old cardboard before I fixed it. The hykolity tree itself was the only large purchase I made that year, and it is still the one I would make again.
Three seasons in, still the easiest part of December
Hinged sections, 1,450 branch tips, 450 warm white LED lights already on the branches, metal stand included. It folds back into the same box and takes one shelf in the basement.
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