Urgent advice needed!! Fake or real!!  

Vintage.
Go with vintage fake.

Would she also accept...
...a fake Stephen?
According to the Australian minister of the environment it 17 years of natural christmas trees have the same ecological footprint as one artificial one...
What about painting 15 umbrellas green, stack them according to size and decorate them freely and creatively...I am sure you are preparing an article about it! Happy holidays

How about planting a dwarf co...
How about planting a dwarf conifer outside and decorate that every year? Or keep one in a container on a deck?
And move it inside if you want to.
There are plenty of dwarf conifers around.
http://www.scientificblogging.com/science_motherhood/great_debate_real_v...

That was
really funny. I'm still chuckling 5 minutes later.

You could do
like Pegboard and just paint your kid green and wrap him with lights.

But
Have you ever seen a drunken dwarf??

We put the lights on our kid
because we can't put them on our vintage aluminum tree. And it won't be languishing in a landfill because we take it out year after year. And if for some reason it was no longer reusable, we could just recycle it.

A branch will do....
it's the spirit that counts.

here I am thinking you needed advice on an Egg chair or something
Ah,well-Happy Holidays :^)

Real. Always real. Smell has ...
Real. Always real. Smell has a great deal to do with memory. You get to watch something new and beautiful wilt away to close it's journey with the year's end. I think I just teared up.

I hope you're being sarcastic...
I hope you're being sarcastic.