Are Real, or Artificial Christmas Trees Best? [POLL]

Over the past few years the Christmas Tree in our house has been an artificial one.  We purchased the tree when we moved into our new house, I thought it would be cleaner and safer than having a real tree in the house. 

This year my family talked me into getting a real tree.  So this Sunday we all got in the car headed off to the tree store, walked around for about a half hour looking for the perfect tree, which we found, loaded it on the roof and headed home.

Once we were home, we took the tree off the car brought it to the back porch to prepare to bring inside. As soon as that happened, I was abandoned, as usual!  I put the tree stand on it after cutting a couple of inches off the bottom, nearly breaking my wrist because the saw bound up cutting it.

After that I had the tree all straight and ready to go, so I carried the tree into the living room, went to stand it up and realized it was too tall so I had to clip the top, this is where the problems started, because it was too tall and having to lean the tree down, I  think the stand unseated itself.

I stood the tree up and made sure the best side was showing.  When that was all done I decided to wait for a day or so to let the branches fall to their natural state before putting any decorations on it.  I'm glad I waited!  I came home from work and checked on the tree and what to my surprise was the tree laying down in the middle of the floor!

I put the tree back up, checked the bolts holding it in to the stand and went about doing a few things around the house.  About an hour later I walked by the living room again and there the tree was laying down again!  By this time I was thinking, "why did we get a real tree?"  I never had this problem with the artificial tree!  I want to thank the people who called in this morning with some advice on how to keep it from falling over.

The woman who said I need to use a piece of plywood under the stand for a better base than the rug, and I think I will use the advice from the gentleman who called and said I need to screw the tree stand to the floor!  That will keep it from falling over!  I do love the look and scent of a real tree but the hassle that comes with it I could do without!