Antique and Vintage Christmas Trees

Evergreen trees have been part of Germanic Christmas celebrations for centuries. Germans would traditionally cut off the top of a fir tree, which they called a "tannenbaum," place it on a table, and then decorate it with fruit and nuts. The tradition probably has roots in the ancient Norse celebration known as Yule, a 12-day winter feast in which a whole tree would be burned. The Pennsylvania Dutch, who brought Germanic Christmas traditions to the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, often depicted Belsnickel—considered a rougher version of St. Nicholas or the saint's helper—as riding a horse and carrying a birch switch or a small, decorated Yule tree. Christmas trees, long considered a frivolous pagan tradition by Puritans, only became widely popular across Europe and the United States in the middle of the 19th century, around the time glass ornaments were developed. Queen Victoria kicked off the Christmas tree craze in 1848 when she and her family were depicted in an engraving gathered around a tall ornamented tannenbaum placed on a side table. While Europeans tended to use trees or tree tops that were four foot tall and shorter, Americans wanted their Christmas trees to reach from floor to ceiling. The first lot selling tall Christmas trees in the United States opened in New York City in 1851. Middle- and upper-class celebrants in England and the United States went over-the-top with their ornate tree décor, developing "High Victorian"-style Christmas trees. Lit candles would be attached to the trees with melted wax to highlight the beautiful ornaments, a practice that caused countless fires. In the 1880s, the Edison company introduced the concept of electric Christmas-tree lights, which were not affordable or practical for ordinary folk until the mid-1910s, but were used for stunning turn-of-the-century holiday window displays at department stores. Even in the 19th century, people became concerned that the popularity of Christmas trees was not environmentally sound. In Germany, deforestation was becoming a major concern, and Germans found that cutting off the top of fir trees stunted their growth and ruined them for the timber industry. Thus, laws were passed limiting each family to one chopped-down Christmas tree. As early as 1845, Germans came up with a work-around: fake trees made of goose, turkey, ostrich, or swan feathers, which were easily gathered and dyed green. The feathers were attached to a central dowel, either with wire or by being placed into drilled holes. However, artificial Christmas trees did not catch on in the United States until Sears, Roebuck, and Company started offering them in its mail-order catalog in 1913. Quickly, Japanese manufacturers started making feather trees to sell to Americans. The turn of the century was also when Americans concerned about deforestation started planting Christmas tree farms. Feather trees fell out of favor with Americans in 1930s when real Christmas tree lots exploded, thanks to the growth of Christmas tree farms. German goosefeather-tree manufacturers selling through the Montgomery Ward catalog started offering Americans trees in a range of colors with decorative tree stands. Around the same time, the British-based Addis Housewares Company began to produce fake Christmas trees from the same animal-hair bristles they used to make toilet scrubbers. These could be decorated with heavier objects and were less flammable than the German feather trees. During World War II, U.S. imports from Germany came to a halt. After the war, companies marketing to Americans started producing Christmas trees from bristles, crepe paper, and synthetic material such as heavy plastics, and Visca, which is a fake straw made of a rayon-like fiber. These were often "flocked," or adorned with fake snow, an illusion previously created by sprinkling Lux powder soap on one’s tree. By the 1960s, artificial trees were also made out of three-ply vinyl and fiberglass, sometimes in completely unnatural colors like white, pink, or blue. In the past few decades, artificial Christmas trees have tended to be green and made of PVC plastic. The vintage Christmas trees that have stayed in the imaginations of collectors, however, are the shiny aluminum trees that could never be mistaken for real trees in flashy colors like silver, gold, and fuchsia. These decidedly futuristic Space Age Christmas trees were first introduced by Modern Coatings, Inc., of Chicago in the late 1950s, as a way to repurpose material once needed for the war. Modern Coatings partnered with Aluminum Specialty Company of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, to create the Evergleam brand, which offered silver trees for about $25 a piece. Red, blue, green, gold, and pink trees came later, and other companies quickly jumped on the bandwagon. Many of the aluminum-tree makers boasted that they used Alcoa aluminum in their products. Putting strings of electric lights on these metal trees proved dangerous, so companies also sold them with revolving color-wheel spotlights to make the trees even more festive. To address these concerns, Aluminum Corporation of America published a brochure explaining how to safely decorate a metal tree in 1959. Americans saw these trees as a Modernist, off-the-wall novelty they couldn't resist, and because of that, Aluminum Specialty Company produced more than 1 million of them. However, the trend was remarkably short-lived. Around 1965, these boldly artificial trees became unpopular, probably because of hippie ecology and back-to-nature movements, as well as "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which explains the "true meaning" of Christmas while the kids rally around a sad but real evergreen.