Artifical... I tend to REALLY light a tree. Hubby jokes that you could read by the light of my tree... it takes me hours to string the lights properly, and is a major headache to unlight it. We threw out the tree last year - lights and all because it had seen one too many Christmases, and I didn't want to be bothered removing 1,000+ lights. This year, we got a new tree (many thanks to you-know-who for the fabulous gift of the tree) and I have half as many lights than normal. My daughter was laughing at me... she swears that I'm going to undo the tree and add more lights before Christmas! Perhaps I will

Besides, this year we have kittens who think the tree is a great new toy.