Today's stroll takes us back in time to the day every year when we started our Christmas decorating, up into the attic or out to the garage we tagged along with our parents to see the treasures that we packed away the year before. But this was the year Mama decided to go modern and something new was about to be the center of it all!
The Aluminum Christmas Tree!
Keeping up with the Joneses in the 1950s and 1960s required purchasing an aluminum Christmas tree.
Perfectly suited to the era's streamlined home decor, these popular trees usually were decorated with solid color ornaments (blue being a favorite color). A spotlight or "color wheel" flooded the reflective tree in rotating tones of red, green, blue, and gold. Sometimes the tree itself was placed on a revolving stand, creating the perfect centerpiece for a '50s picture window. How I remember Mama's picture window and how she guarded it from baseballs, footballs and even golf balls that when flying around our front yard!
I think my Mama also liked the idea of not having to clean up those darn tree needles that shed all over. In Florida it was too warm to keep the trees looking good for very long so we waited closer to Christmas Day to even get to put one up.
It was 54 years ago when a sales manager for an aluminum cookware company saw a hand-made aluminum Christmas tree. He took the idea back to his company, and in 1959, America saw the first commercial aluminum Christmas tree.
It was not billed as an artificial tree but instead was called a ''permanent'' tree. Some people immediately embraced the new space age tree. Conservation of real trees was not a consideration, but the chance to have a new modern interpretation of an ornamental tree inspired some and dismayed others. Artificial trees of various kinds had been available in earlier years. There was even a base-metal tree available in 1950 along with feather trees and visca (straw-like rayon) trees in green or white.
Aluminum trees were first manufactured by the Aluminum Specialty Company in Manitowoc, Wis. It is estimated that this company made more than four million trees in a 10-year period. ''Shredded'' aluminum strips were wrapped by hand around the wire branch and then fluffed to spread out the aluminum needles.
Each branch was then packed in a cardboard sleeve. Any branch could be put in any one of the holes in the pole that was the trunk because the branches were all the same length. This made the tree easy to assemble. The correct shape was attained because the holes in the pole that formed the trunk were drilled at different angles. The first trees had a folding tripod base to hold the tree trunk. Later, other stands became available that rotated the tree and played music.
It was recommended that electric lights should not be put on the trees because of the possibility of an electric shock. Color wheels, which had earlier been used to decorate in other ways, were used to illuminate the aluminum trees with different colors as the wheel with four or five colored transparent sections rotated past the light source. The branches were not strong enough to carry many ornaments. Usually the decorations on the trees were only glass balls and often of only one color.
Eventually many other companies manufactured their own version of an aluminum Christmas tree. Some later models had pompom ends on the branches to make the tree look fuller. Colors were introduced - gold, blue, green and even pink. Some models were only one foot high, while the tallest were seven feet. The more expensive models had more branches. Even half trees were made to put on the wall in small areas or an office. The interest in aluminum trees peaked about 1965 and by the end of the 1960s few were being manufactured.
These trees are collector items today, but there are reproduction trees available now. A search on the Internet found at least one source for a new aluminum tree. It was a seven-foot tree for about $550. That's a far cry from what the first ones sold for!
I'd love to go all Retro and get one though, but my son would have a heart attack, 2 years ago I switched to an artificial tree and he still hasn't gotten over it.
I do have a small pink tree for my bedroom though...
No matter what tree you have this year...don't forget to add the sparkle!
