You have great info here and make very valid points. And of course while not coming right out and saying it you did make the valid point, “you get what you pay for.”
With all that said, why don’t I pull the trigger and buy the very last tree I will have to buy? Because besides being old, I am old fashioned and for some strange reason I love what I should dread. Like, going out on a cold night and paying some stranger too much money for a live fur that I am going to have to get home, spend hours (but loving it) getting it in the house and decorating it. All this for just a few weeks enjoyment and then I have the headache of getting all the stuff off the tree and packed up for next year, getting the now dead tree out of the house and then of course vacuuming up all the dry needles. Stupid? Guilty I guess and still love it. 
Now the door wreath, I am thinking hard about that! May just have to pick one up. 