"Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast" ... Lewis Carroll
Fake Christmas Trees
I have never thought of this, but I do remember my grandparents when they decided to get a fake Christmas tree. It was probably late sixties – early seventies, and their tree was silver. I suppose as we get older and our children have moved away, this is a lot easier to deal with.
While writng an email, with Gmail, to a friend about getting our Christmas tree, I noticed all these ads about fake Christmas trees. The one that got my attention, and started this post, was the one that read; Fiber-Optic Christmas Trees.
photo from above site, looks real…eh?
The things you can find on the internet, while doing a search for antique fake christmas trees, I came across this story Faux firs growing more popular than real ones.
Now getting back to the silver tree of my grandparents, I also found this at the CBC Archives. Dec. 22, 1960 Aluminum Christmas trees come to Canada. To hear the report, I believe you need Windows Media Player. In this clip, CBC Radio reporter Tom Robinson expresses a mixture of disdain and admiration for slot-together “tannenbaums.”
This is the Did you Know? information from the CBC Archives, just in case you didn’t read it.
Aluminum Christmas trees flourished for about a decade, from the 1950s until the late 1960s. They came in a variety of sizes, from table-top models to giants that brushed the ceiling. Colour choices included green, pink, blue, red, gold and silver. Many were illuminated from below by multi-coloured lights; some lights rotated. Manufacturers warned buyers not to attach lights to boughs for fear of electrical shock.
The earliest artificial Christmas trees appeared in Germany in the 1800s. They were made of wire covered with goose, turkey, ostrich or swan feathers. Often, the feathers were dyed green to resemble pine needles. The first trees with brush-like boughs were manufactured by an American company which also made toilet brushes. Most artificial trees sold today look much more realistic.
An estimated 46 million North American homes have artificial Christmas trees. The Canadian Christmas Tree Growers’ Association and the U.S.-based National Christmas Tree Association are trying to make the real thing more popular. They promote the purchase of natural trees and lobby governments to protect the interests of tree growers and sellers.
Canada’s favourite species of natural Christmas trees are balsam fir, Fraser fir, Scotch pine and white spruce. They take on average seven to 10 years to mature. In 2001 Nova Scotia produced the most trees, followed by Quebec and Ontario. In 2000 Canada exported 2.5 million Christmas trees.
Aluminum trees figure prominently in the 1965 animated television classic A Charlie Brown Christmas. Charlie Brown and Linus are sent by their friends to buy “a great, big, shiny aluminum Christmas tree,” for their Yuletide play. Charlie Brown rejects the advice and buys a scrawny real tree. The message that aluminum trees represented glitzy commercialism may have helped to hasten their demise.
Now everyone go out and get a real tree, unless you have one of those vintage aluminum ones.
Nothing related to christmas trees, but it is related to the above article, ‘aluminum’ should be spelt ‘aluminium’, that is what my spell-checker tells me anyway…and it is set to Canadian-English.
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