My folksy entry for November's Nibblefest Art Contest, the theme being 'Christmas Trees', features a living, snow-laden conifer tree, pre-cut.  While my family does celebrate our holidays with real trees as opposed to artificial, and as much as I always adore our decorated tree, I admit that, as a rather hopeless 'tree-hugger', acquiring one can give me a small pang since it does strike me as a little wasteful at times, this chopping down of nice healthy trees and all for the sake of just a few weeks of festivities.  As such, it's for this reason that I always try to compensate a bit by purchasing our family's holiday trees exclusively through various local charitable fund-raising events -- somehow it helps in quelling my annual Christmas tree-buying ambivalence.....