There's a neighborhood garage sale in Affton, Missouri that's held annually in June to which I've been going since discovering it about 3 years ago. It's an older neighborhood and always seems to bring out some good items. This year, I came across a beaten up box filled with what appeared to be white branches to a Christmas tree. Further digging revealed they were indeed that and that the box also held the trunk. It looked similar to the silver aluminum trees I'm more familiar with having 2 sections of trunk that fit together with holes drilled into the trunk to receive the varied sized branches. The needles weren't aluminum, but rather plastic or vinyl.
It wasn't marked with a price, so I asked the woman who was hosting the sale. She said $10. Not knowing if all the branches were there, I was a bit hesitant and put the tree back. As I was getting ready to check out with my other items, her husband whispered, "I'll let you have it for $5". So I went home with it. Setting it up, I found it was missing just one branch which didn't really affect the look. I put it away in our attic and almost forgot about it until this past week. I dug it out and set it up and decorated it using just red, green and gold glass ornaments and an atomic tree topper (another garage sale find).
It was set up for several days before I realized how much better it would look with a color wheel. It makes for a stunning show. It reminds me of the Christmas tree lot Charlie Brown and Linus visit in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (more on that later).
Doing some research (also known as posting to the "Merry Kitschmas" Facebook group), I found it's a "Starlite" model made by the Revlis company. Revlis was one of the many manufacturers to jump on board when the aluminum Christmas tree craze hit in the early 1960's after being introduced by the Evergleam company in 1959.
While some Christmas tree historians (yes, there really are Christmas tree historians) blame "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for the demise of the aluminum tree, the fact is, like any other fad, they were already waning in popularity by Christmas of 1965. Charlie Brown may have only served the final blow.
We briefly had one, color wheel and all, when I was a kid. My mother hated it, so back to the artificial green. Which I preferred. That atomic star on your tree? Hit me in the heart. That was the tree topper we had all the years I was a kid. It was THE topper in my book, took me time to adjust to the light up star we have in my family. Thanks for the look into the past. Hope you and yours have a Merry Christmas, Tom.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Joe! We had an silver aluminum Christmas tree for my earliest Christmases I remember, them my mom bought a green artificial that I loved just as much and was THE Christmas tree of my youth. We always had a light-up star or an angel my mom bought from Woolworth's. Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Deletelate to this party, sorry, but: we set up a small (2' or so) aluminum tree every year, and i have one of those spinny color wheel things, too. it's pretty great, but the wheel is kind of noisy, even after taking it apart and making sure it's well oiled. i like the white tree quite a lot. shows off the colors better than our aluminum one.
ReplyDeleteNever too late to party. Yes, the color wheel shows really well on the white tree. My original color wheel which belonged to my mom is noisy. The one I'm currently using I found at a garage sale and the color wheel is much lighter (plastic film instead of a glass plate like my other) and much quieter.
Deletemy lenses are plastic, but it's still a bit grindy-sounding. it's not too bad, but it still makes me skip using it from year to year. that, and the fact that we just don't have many outlets in that room. we joke that the house was built back when electricity was still considered a fad -- as a result, many rooms have ONE two-pronged outlet in them. knob & tube wiring, hooray!
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