There’s a place where ‘aluminum Christmas trees still rule’

If, by chance, you’ll be traveling to the upper Midwest for the Christmas holidays, consider visiting Manitowoc, Wis., on the shore of Lake Michigan to witness “Evergleams on Eighth.”

 

It’s a nostalgic display of more than 200 illuminated aluminum Christmas trees in Manitowoc’s downtown district. The sparkling, glittery and glamorous exhibit opens on Nov. 22 and continues through Jan. 7, 2024. 

A major Manitowoc manufacturer – Aluminum Specialty Company – introduced America to the Evergleam brand of aluminum Christmas trees in 1959. The trees were shiny and cheap. Sales skyrocketed. 

During the Christmas season, the factory was “busier than Santa’s Toyland,” wrote Patti Zarling of the Manitowoc Herald Times.

 

Retro fashion expert and author Ki Nassauer is a big fan of Evergleams. She said: “The trees came with one warning: Don’t put lights on them. The fear was that people would be electrocuted if any wiring was exposed. The solution was perhaps even better than lights: spinning color wheels!”

 

“Placed on the floor near the tree, the wheels spun to cast different-colored lights on the branches,” Nassauer said. The typical cycle was: red to green to yellow to blue. Repeat. 

Some of the aluminum trees had stands that rotated as well, adding to the overall effect of “aluminization.”

 

“People placed glass ornaments on the trees, which added to the color-changing effect,” Nassauer said. “Shiny Brite ornaments were the most popular.”

 

The trend toward aluminum trees peaked in the mid-1960s. Coincidentally…or not…a television special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” premiered in 1965. 

The production had a profound impact on audiences…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. 

Lucy instructed her personal blockhead buddy Charlie Brown to “get the biggest aluminum tree you can find.” In the end, Charlie Brown is overcome with emotion, finding the “true meaning of Christmas” in a wee scraggly fir, rather than in a behemoth artificial tree.

 

David Murray of the Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune opined: “Charlie Brown’s scrawny Christmas tree represented something (Schulz thought was) missing from American culture: authenticity.” 

The show “was used to represent all that was wrong with Christmas…the aluminum Christmas tree.”

 

Without question, “the airing of the Charlie Brown show contributed to the demise of the aluminum tree industry,” Murray asserted. Production of Evergleam trees ceased in 1971. 

“Rest in peace” applied for three full decades. 

Then, in 2004, two Manitowoc artists of national acclaim – Julie Lindemann and John Shimon – rocked the boat and published a book, “Season’s Gleamings: The Art of the Aluminum Christmas Tree.”

 More than 45 stunning color photographs resurrected “the beauty and range of aluminum arbor,” commented journalist Mary Louise Schumacher. The authors may not have “invented” the vintage movement to reclaim aluminum Christmas trees, but they definitely helped propel it to the forefront, she said.

“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.”

 

Organizers of “Evergleams of Eighth” say: “It’s our hope to foster an appreciation for these trees as pieces of art right here in Manitowoc where they were made.”

It gets cold in Manitowoc. The city is about 40 miles southeast of Green Bay. Skip the walking tour and reserve a seat on the heated “Trolley to the Trees.”

 

It’s always warm inside the Manitowoc Public Library, which is “Evergleam Central.” Stroll through “Frankie’s Forest” of rare aluminum trees, courtesy of local resident Francine Pfeffer.