Myths, urban legends, mis-perceptions and sometimes outright lies. We know there are some crazy things that people have been told about Real Christmas Trees over the years. And this has led to a large number of confused consumers. While many of these myths can be traced back to the fake tree industry, many are like urban legends … they just sort of exist and nobody really knows how they started.

Now, NCTA is launching the “Great De-Myth-ification Campaign” with its 10 Biggest Myths About Christmas Trees, designed to provide straight-forward answers and facts in a simple, compiled list. The top 10 list is culled from emails received by consumers, plus questions by news media and messages on blogs and such. Each year, NCTA receives more than 2,000 inquiries from the public, so we have a pretty good feel for what people think about Christmas Trees. Here are the 10 biggest myths, in no specific order:

MYTH #1: Real Christmas Trees are cut down from forests.
BUSTED: Seriously, do people still believe this? To be completely accurate, in a few locations around North America, the Forest Service sells permits for people to harvest wild trees. They do this in places to create fire breaks. But it’s a very tiny percentage of all trees used. Most trees come from a farm where someone plants them. And each year, growers plant one to three seedlings for each tree harvested.

MYTH #2: You save a tree by using a fake tree.
BUSTED: This is obviously tied to Myth #1, and also directly attributable to the fake tree industry. We’ve got copies of ads for fake trees that say exactly that: “Save a tree.” Of course, this is false, because trees are a crop. They are planted by farmers to be used specifically as Christmas Trees. Close to half a billion trees are currently growing on tree farms in the U.S. alone. The really ironic part of the ad for the fake tree is one of the selling points is that it comes in a sturdy cardboard box. Ummm, how exactly is that saving a tree?

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