A sad sapling put a dent in aluminum tree business

Glittering, shimmering and basking in the glow of gently rotating color wheels, aluminum Christmas trees were advertised to last forever. That was the claim professed by the Aluminum Specialty Company of Manitowoc, Wis.

Its “Evergleam” aluminum trees, introduced in 1959, were deemed “disco cool” way before disco was cool.

Aluminum was reflective of the post-World War II “Space Age,” and advertisers targeted America’s growing middle-class market, presenting “new ideals of home and family, with a fresh, rocket ship sheen to it,” wrote David Murray of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune.

National magazines featured advertising that touted the “lightness, brightness and beauty of aluminum that will come into your home and into your life,” Murray said.

“We had a very good indication that this aluminum tree thing was going to go big,” said Jerry Waak, who was Aluminum Specialty’s sales manager. He told Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist based in Milwaukee, Wis., that the company ran around-the-clock to meet production demands.

Peering into the 1960s, the future looked exceptionally bright for the aluminum tree industry, Waak said.

“Coincidentally, or not, a television special, ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ premiered in 1965, about the same time the aluminum tree craze began to thin out in American households,” Schumacher said.

“She was a bossy little thing, that Lucy Van Pelt, with her dictate to Charlie Brown: ‘Get the biggest aluminum tree you can find.’ The familiar story ends, of course, with the earnest Charlie defying Lucy and finding the ‘true meaning of Christmas’ in a wee little fir, rather than the artificial space-age icon.”

Indeed. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” resonated with television audiences in a way no other children’s programming had before, just the way the Peanuts comic strip cartoonist Charles Schulz had hoped it would.

Schulz was never shy, but always sly, in promoting social causes he believed in through his commercial work.

Reporter Murray opined: “Charlie Brown’s scrawny Christmas tree represented something missing from American culture: authenticity.” The show “was used to represent all that was wrong with Christmas…the aluminum Christmas tree.” Egads.

Right or wrong, dagnabbit, the airing of the Charlie Brown show contributed to the demise of the aluminum tree industry.

Production of Evergleam trees ceased in 1971, and Aluminum Specialty reverted to its core product line – cookware collections.

“Years later, though, it seems Lucy’s instincts for something modern turned out to possess enough holiday oomph, after all,” Schumacher said.

Two Manitowoc artists of national acclaim – Julie Lindemann and John Shimon – published a book in 2004, Season’s Gleamings: The Art of the Aluminum Christmas Tree. “More than 45 stunning color photographs reveal the beauty and range of aluminum arbor,” Schumacher said.

Lindemann and Shimon may not have “invented” the retro movement to reclaim aluminum Christmas trees, but they definitely helped propel it to the forefront.

“Today the trade in vintage aluminum trees is fierce, and these crisp, beautiful symbols of modern living are again brightening thousands of American holidays,” Schumacher wrote. “Season’s Gleamings is a reminder of how beautiful an aluminum tree can be…for lovers of Christmas.”

“Beguiled by the wonderfully odd, antenna-like forms, Lindemann and Shimon thought of the aluminum trees as more than forgotten seasonal décor,” Schumacher wrote. “To them, they were sculpture.”

The artists created “a forest of the spiky, metallic trees in a 19th century warehouse that became their art gallery, home and studio.”

“They rescued trees, one by one, and placed a ‘we-want-your-trees’ ad on a local radio station. At the time, many in Manitowoc thought the trees hopelessly passé, even tacky or sterile, and unloaded them happily.”

“With a little effort, the couple grew a forest of 40 trees” that were brought to life again. “With spotlights illuminating the trees from beneath, pools of light danced across the walls.”

And the people came to witness, including “these little grannies with their Instamatics coming up to our windows just wanting to look at our trees,” Lindemann said.

“There is something harsh about them (the silver trees),” she said. “The ultimate consumer symbol, they are very American well.”

“There is something profound about them. It’s emblematic of how humans thought they could outdo nature at that time.”