If it's gonna be my tree it's gonna be "live" because of that wonderful aroma that just triggers all sorts of sense-memory
and , for me ,Christmas time is a time of substantially "heightened" sensations and aesthetics.

Also I've found that there is less of a tendency to "overload" a "live" Christmas tree with so many decorations as to turn the tree into something only Donald Trump could appreciate; in other words *cheapen* the tree into a Broadway production. Something of the spirit of the tree has to be allowed to show through and not just the aroma.

Now I have seen artifical trees that were positively works of art and if I exercised a preferecne it would be for the all white artificial trees as they enhance and augment the light and the reflected colors of the decor. I prefer all white or all blue lights crowned with some elaborate Star of Bethlehem-styled light ornament , and pale gold and silvery ornaments mixed in with my collection of little "classic" St Nicholas figures , but my favorites are still the clear or crystaline "glass ornaments".

I honestly can't stand the burlesque Coca-Cola concocted Santa Claus as an annoying "artificiality" all its own and serves as the icon of all that "cheapens" Christmas with crass marketing of it.
The Coca-cola Santa commands about as much a source for derision as those damned "garden gnomes" , or plastic "pink flamingoes" of Florida-origin .that have been the sport to lampoon and "look" as if they were desgined to annoy one's neighbors.

If nothing else ,Christmas is always about the light and the music and my best Christmases were ,and are, with friends whom break out their guitars playing to only the lights of the Christmas tree....which are enough , yet never more overbaring than a grand candlelabra.

I'm preparing to set up this year's "live" Christmas to make up for not being able to do so last year as I was in the middle of moving. For me a house without a Chrstmas tree during this season seems emptier , hollow , even strangely "artificial" in an odd sort of way. I get far too much joy from this tradition of the lighted tree to pass up being a part of it and it's one of the few western religiously-"inspired" traditions that I'm aware of that invites everyone to join in if just for a day. Charles Dickens helped that.