Artificial Christmas Trees Are Taking Over

Christmas trees have evolved quite a bit in the last 85 years or so. No not the thing that grows in the soil. I mean those artificial trees that more and more people are using. It seems that the first artificial tree was introduced in the years right before W.W. II. Hmmmm Maybe Hitler and that German crew started the war to prevent us from erecting those fake trees. If so, I would have to give Hitler "a good impulse but bad idea in expressing it"  grade. I hate artificial trees, but starting a war to stop people from having them might be a little too extreme.

Anyway, forget that thought. Did you know that the first fake trees were "brush bristle" style trees, sold via the Sears catalogue, shipped in a white bucket and selling for $1.95 (the small one to the bigger version at $4.95. One had to use his or her imagination to put one of those in the house. Uh, that's sort of like imagining a politician is telling the truth when he promises to lower taxes if you elect him.

But wait! Thanks to Sears, evolution also happens to fake Christmas trees. The 1947 Sears catalog advertised  a chiming tree that tinkled "Silent Night." It was made from flame resistant, "grass-like rayon." (I suspect the EPA would ban that today as a flammable substance). That's perhaps the only time someone called rayon "grass-like." I am not sure what rayon is, much less rayon grass. That catalogue said that the tree would last "for years and years", but I suspect looking at rayon like grass for one Christmas season would be enough for anyone.

The 50's was the year of pink in decor. People wanted pink everything, They had pink refrigerators which put food on their pink kitchen countertop that had been cooked on their pink oven range. So pink, and white Christmas trees were the in thing. People opened their curtains in the front room parlor to show the world what pink Christmas was. But alas! Reynolds company put an end to that pink nonsense with the introduction of the first aluminum foil Christmas trees a few years alter.  I always say that nothing speaks of the birth of Christ, brotherhood, and the rest of that yule thing like aluminum foil (Maybe the pink trees affected my brain).

In the 60's no aluminum tree was complete without a rotating color wheel, introduced in a 1960s JC Penney catalog. The spotlight turned the fake Christmas tree into a disco movie of rotating colors. Never had fake trees been so garish as with the rotating color wheel that turned an aluminum tree into whatever it became when a color wheel light flashed on the fake tree. I can remember one year my parents got a fake tree and a wheel. We concluded after the season that we missed Christmas because of the contraption and we would revert to reality trees.. It was the only year we ever had a fake tree.

One thing that wheel did was make people ant amore real like fake tree. The 70's and 80's gave us more of what fake trees look like today...sort of like a guy wearing a John Travolta leisure suit in an 80's disco film. It's a suit, you could see that, but it's not quite real.  From that point on trees could pop open and close for attic storage.  The artificial tree was saved from extinction and is now more common than the mother nature variety. Seventy percent of American homes now have artificial trees, yet most of those artificial tree owners surveyed say their trees still appear to be too fake for their taste. What does that say about their owners?

Though live trees are more environmentally cleaner and sustainable agricultural products than fake trees the Christmas tree growers in the United States blames a shift in demographics, changes in the supply and pricing of trees, customer irritation with what they perceive as the messy nature of live trees in the house and competition form the fake tree industry as the beginning of the end for the live tree tradition in the United States. I say that we already have too many of those fake mall Santa's. Let's join the (Hitler?) revolution and fight the artificial Christmas tree take-over.  Long live real trees and real Christmas