Wiz
Thursday's article (the link that says Yesterday's column) talked about safety issues and the maintenance for a real tree. But I am glad you brought it up again. It is sad to hear every year that someone's house caught on fire because of a tree.
That info on lights and ornaments - wow you have done your homework. I was in the store yesterday and saw that many tress now come with the lights already installed and something I didn't know was that they can come with both the white set and a colored set so with one tree you can have two different preferences. You just plug in the one you want to use. Next year you can use the other set lol.
I have about 200 ornaments on the front 2/3 of my tree plus there are about 100 icicles. I also have about 6 strands of garlands or various kinds so probably 90 ft. all on a 6 ft tree and the back of the tree is barely decorated.
Over the years if you slowly buy more expensive ornaments you will realize that they bring back some wonderful memories of past Christmases together. It is never too late to start.
My first tree was small. We had to put it on a table to see it and all the presents went under the table. lol So if you aren't ready for one of these larger trees then start small with a table top tree and maybe next year you will want to go a little larger. The advantage of that is that you can slowly add to your ornament collection without going broke just buying things the first year. And like I said in the article a lot of stuff can be bought in dollar stores, discount stores and even in second hand stores so shop around.