You know, real trees aren't so expensive (Save Mart sold ours for twenty dollars). They smell really nice and don't have color-coded tabs, either. The only problem with them is that the branches way down at the bottom are pretty flimsy, so everything winds up at the top, as if the angel is sucking them into her dress with a vacuum. Twenty dollars for a tree to wow your family and make your living room smell fantastic is a pretty good deal.
I'm really against those all-white fake trees with blinking ornaments already on them... I refer to them as "Christmas-destroying robot trees." Remember the scene where Charlie Brown infiltrates their base to rescue the hostage?