(First posted 12/25/2012. Updated for its 50th year) Some families are more traditional than others; I suppose mine is more traditional than most, something that is really brought out during the Christmas holiday. For example, how many families have a Christmas tree in its fiftieth year of service? Probably not that many. We have covered things other than cars here on CC, so for this year’s holiday, why not a classic Christmas tree?
The story of our tree starts at a difficult time following my parents separation in the fall of 1966. When Christmas rolled around that year, my mother did what most of us would do in that spot, namely exactly what we did in 1965. That meant a real Christmas tree. The problem was that a real tree required a neighbor’s assistance to set up and later remove. The next year would be different.
The very same tree early in its long career
I am not sure where she purchased it, but Mom proudly bought an artificial tree in 1967. I remember that an artificial tree was almost a luxury item in those days. The one she chose was an eight-foot tall Scotch pine that cost quite a lot of money. The big green Scotch pine may not have been the Cadillac of Christmas trees, but it was at least a good, solid Buick. Its biggest benefit was that she could set it up all by herself: there were just two pole sections and a bunch of individual branches with wire ends that fit into holes. I recall Mom’s friends ooh-ing and aah-ing over that tree the first few years.
The tree was made by Consolidated Novelty Co., of Paterson, NJ, and Amsterdam NY. The company was a longtime maker of novelty decorations and apparently quite a player during the 1960s aluminum Christmas tree fad. Those of you over 50 undoubtedly remember them. We had neighbors who had one, and I loved watching the thing change colors as the disc with the four colored plastic lenses slowly revolved in front of the floodlight. But since we were traditional people, there would be no aluminum tree in our house.
The company seems to have been active at least into the mid-1970s (at that time it was actively litigating patent issues), but apparently it went out of business. I guess you just can’t sell a lot of fake Christmas trees in the USA anymore.
By the late 1980s, Mom had grown tired of hauling the bazillion branches out of the 5′ x 3′ x 3′ box in the garage, and she bought a smaller tree. By then I had my own house, and happily accepted her offer of a free Christmas tree. With the sole exception of 1992 (when Mrs. JPC and I got some new furniture in our old, small house and the thing simply wouldn’t fit), the old tree has graced our living room every other year since.
As luck would have it, Mom got tired of many of the old ornaments when she got tired of the old tree, so they too have stayed in service. You know that ornaments are old when they read “Made in USA” –and in New York and New Jersey, even. Many of them date back to the late 1950s when my parents were first married.
By the mid-’60s, we even got some fancy European imports. An obscure little stamp on one of the boxes indicates that the “finest craftsmen of Europe” actually resided in Czechoslovakia. Who knew? There is very little post-1970s content on this tree.
Except for a few years when the kids were small and we kept the old breakable decorations boxed up, we have continued putting these oldies on the tree every year. A few of them bear the scars of too many years in close proximity to one of the 50 hot C7 light bulbs that used to grace the tree. (This is my one concession to modernity – there is just no reason to tolerate the massive amount of heat generated by those old-style light bulbs, which likely will disappear soon anyhow.) The current set was chosen by Mrs. JPC in the early 1990s.
Actually, there is one other big change from the early days: No more individual strands of tinsel. In the first place, tinsel just hasn’t been worth a damn since they stopped making it out of lead. The plastic stuff has no weight to it and doesn’t hang decently. What’s more, there’s no less pleasant task than removing temporary strands of plastic tinsel from eleventy-six permanent tree branches.
As you can see, the decorated tree has a decidedly retro look. Actually, that was not intentional, but is something that just sort of happened over the years. Every family’s Christmas tree has a unique look: Some are themed, some are covered with decorations made by the kids and others evolve from year to year. We like the old-style, shiny-glass look.
My three children have remained very much engaged in the annual tree decorating. Over the last year or so I have suggested some changes, ranging from using different lights to possibly replacing the old tree altogether; you’d think that I had suggested murdering their mother. No sir, we will not be replacing the old tree, nor its lights or decorations any time soon. So even though I know you can buy a much more lifelike artificial tree today, and that real trees have made quite a comeback in status over the last 20 or 30 years, I guess we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing. However, there will come the day when all my extra labor will have gone off to new homes, and then it may be time to pass this old tree (and its giganto-box) on to another generation, providing there is any interest. In all honesty, however, I think there might be a fight.
MY AUNT SOFIE AND UNCLE DOM HAD THE ALUMINUM TREE WITH THE COLOR CHANGING WHEEL, AND MY ANT NANETTE AND UNCLE ANTHONY HAD AN ARTIAFICAL GREEN TREE WITH THE BUBBLEY LIGHTS . THOSE SHURE WERE COOL!
JPC,
You’ve got ours beat by 25 years. Excellent cond. yours is in. You must not have had any cats all those years. Definitively no icicle tinsel. That’s our only drawback. And, I can’t get it out of the branches Thousands of dollars saved, and it looks great.
Merry Christmas to you.
Sorry but in our house it HAS to be a real tree. This year I have a “stand” that holds lots of water so it should last well ( we keep it untill Jan 6th of course).
We have our elder daughter home (from Chicago) this christmas, but our son is missing for the first time ( with new in-laws). Maybe in future years, with only two or three of us home, my wife might get her way and we’ll make do with an artificial one. Then I will not have to choose a car on the basis of being able to fit 8 feet of real tree into it.
Happy Christmas everyone.
JP,
Thank you for those Christmas memories! A Merry Christmas to you and your family! And I want to thank you for putting a name behind the Christmas trees of our younger years. Ours was the aluminum tree and after all the gift wrapping paper was balled up and placed in the trash I would just love to just sit near that tree and watch the changing of the colors. Up until today I often wondered who made my tree! Oh, and those Christmas bulb boxes look awful familiar, too!
The soft hum of the turning motor, the reds, greens, blues……. And a fine time to try out those walkie talkies, or tune in your new Panasonic portable radio……or just see just how many critters are in a drop of your tap water with that new microscope Santa brought!
Merry Christmas!
Always did like the ’67 best. Never liked how they went to the chintzy plastic dashboards starting in 68, or the over the top restyle…wait, wrong review.
+1!
Good story. We always had a real tree until my parents got older and started spending Christmas with one of my sisters. The glass ornaments look familiar – we had several boxes of them for the tree, and a few of them might still be in my mom’s attic. I think my sisters have appropriated most of them. Tinsel was always a pain and we gave up on it after several years and a cat who liked to play with it.
Merry Christmas, JP!
Growing up in Maine, I only knew one kid with a fake tree. His family sprayed it with pine-scented aerosol.
I also cherish the 50s glass ornaments that have lasted this long. Here’s my favorite. In this modern Jet Age, holidays are brightened by the power of…The Atom.
I absolutely love it!
Tell me about it with the lightbulbs. This year, I attempted to buy some replacement clear bulbs for the window candles, and you can’t find them. Yeah, the stores will happily sell you strings of LED’s, but replacement screw in incadescent bulbs? Fagedaboudit! Ended up using 60w dining room chandelier bulbs which are brighter than I wanted, but at least the candles are up and the wife is happy.
I went through the same thing in the 80s. I had a couple of old lighted decorations from my grandma that used the older narrow C6 bulbs – the ones always wired in series. I went to the store for some replacements and ended up on an epic hunt for them. I finally scrounged up a few (this was before ebay), but eventually decided that there was just no really good reason to keep using 50 year old electric light sets with brittle wire insulation anymore. I skipped over the C7s right to the mini-incandescents
I grew up with a fake tree. We had ours on a rotating stand so you could see all the ornaments. We used a LOT of lights, too. With it rotating in the dark over the cardboard Christmas village and Barclay figures underneath, it was kind of magical.
Thanks for that, JPC. Are you surprised if I tell you that our tree has genuine candles? And genuine leaded tinsel, that Stephanie bought some 25 years ago before it was banned, and reuses carefully each year (there really isn’t anything like it).
This year’s tree was smaller, with fewer candles. But some years…they really lit up the room.
Here’s a close-up:
My parents still had the candle holders, and we’d burn the candles for an hour or so on Christmas Eve. The rest of the time they used the big old hot colored lights.
We’ve gotten lazy in our old age, and haven’t put up a tree at all the last two years, except for the two-foot-tall manzanita covered with white lights in the living room window. Merilee bought a pre-lighted artificial tree that we used for several years – and will again, with ornaments going right back to 1962 when we were married.
The candles are both impressive and terrifying at the same time. 🙂 Quite beautiful, actually. The farm my mother grew up on was not electrified until she was about 6 and she recalls the candles being used. Mom also used the leaded tinsel over and over for years, but we finally got to the point where there weren’t enough really good pieces left to do the job right. Time marches on, I guess.
My paternal grandparents did that…once…to show us. I was six…not that greatly impressed.
I’m more so, today, when I realize the extreme fire risk It’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime sight…maybe the LED engineers can make lifelike candle-mounts on the next generation of holiday lights.
Seriously. Some things are beautiful to behold. And some beautiful things are so terrifyingly risky, they ought not be even tried.
Nice tree! Due to space constraints, I use a retro fiber optic tree Mom got me when I moved into my condo. It even has a rotating base, which you can’t see in the photo below.
Merry Christmas, all!
Here’s my list:
1. Excellent article of memories!!
2. “Vintage” decorations/ornaments are better than anything you’ll find today.
3. The aluminum tree brought back memories as I had a friend who had one of these. It was cool…for awhile.
4. The thing I love most about your tree is the longer needles. I have been all over, including the internet, and you cannot find an artificial tree with long needles like the ones from the sixties and seventies! My mother had one she got in 1979. Thick, full, you couldn’t “see” through it. (Two years later she got tired of it, and there we were, out in the freezing cold, looking at real ones!) Where are these trees today…?!?! Everything is thin-needles and cheap-looking, scrawny branches. And for up to, and over, $1,000!! Excuse me???
Our first Christmas in Oregon I cut a tree from the property. Unfortunately, Ponderosa pine trees drip sap, so that was the last year I cut a tree. Home Desperate had a Christmas Eve sale on a pre-lit tree, so we got one and the next year (2004) we started to use it. Every year since.
The only change is one of the strings packed it in, so we have one section with colored LED lights with the rest white incandescents.
From what I’ve seen, Czechoslovakia must have been a major ornament making country into the ’70s.
Merry Christmas!
Good article.
Delta Ornaments: I have a couple of boxes of these, dating back at least to 1962-1967 era from my grand parents and from when my parents first got married, most of these have managed to survive and are on our tree right now, complimened of course, by the 60’s vintage Seattle “space needle” tree topper.
What a terrific Christmas morning read there JP. It really brought back quite a few memories. When I was young my family used one of those aluminum trees for years, revolving color wheel and all. Since marrying my much beloved wife 35 years ago it has been real trees every year. We do have a few ornaments that are north of 60 years old and Paul’s comment about the leaded tinsel made me smile. I have 5 unopened boxes of that stuff in case we decide to really get retro. I hope you all have a great day today.
I am also reminded of the year when, after I took the Christmas tree down, I hauled it down to the plant where I worked, set it up in a jury-rig stand way out behind the maintenance shop, and set fire to a bottom branch. Whoosh! That thing was just charred branches in about 45 seconds.
We were very careful to keep water in the stand after that, back when we used actual trees.
Very nice article – the holidays are all about traditions. I have that exact same box of Shiny Brite glass ornaments, and all of the ornaments my parents bought and collected from their wedding in 1947 through the 50’s and 60’s – at least the ones the dog or cats or the kid did not knock off the tree and break (man, a lot of those glass ones were fragile).
The one thing I never accepted was the aluminum tree, though my mother’s sister (who anticipated the disco era?) could be counted on to slap hers, decorated with one color themed ornaments (dare I say blue balls), in front of the “picture window” each year. The artificial scotch pine looks way better. Anyone remember “bubble lights”? I thought those were pretty cool but we never had a set.
I indeed had a string of bubble lights that were the old ones with the narrow C6 base bulbs. These taught me about the bell curve. There were 7 lights on the string. 2 had gone out early and were replaced with regular bulbs. Then, one year, 3 or 4 of the remaining bulbs burned out, leaving one or two stragglers. These used to fascinate me (and actually, still do.)
Actually Czechoslovakia was famous for it’s crystal and glass wares. Still is. Ever heard of bohemian glass, well that is where it is made. Except for now there maybe some Chinese knock offs. The real stuff is expensive.
When I went to my parents’ home in San Juan in 1963, I was appalled to find a fake tree in our house. But after my sisters walked me down to the beach two blocks away, I was blown away by the bluest sky I had ever seen, and an ocean as blue as the sky. Hard to see the horizon. After that, the fake tree didn’t seem like such a bad idea. We have had a fake tree here in Utah for the past five years or so. Boys away at school, and me off in DC, Suzy got tired of the effort required to do the whole thing herself. Build a fire in the hearth next to the tree and life is quite pleasant.
Ours is the aluminum job from 61 or 62, that my family bought years ago new…after a time of indifference and shunning, it has passed to me and my family, where it has taken prime spot for ten years or so. The color wheel was lost to time, however, but the memories and the grinding reduction gear noise has not…one great thing of this type of tree is if you dont install the branches, it makes a great festivus pole, if that is your thing, so as to properly decorate the room for the ritual ” airing of greivances”, but i digress….happy holidays ( or festivus) to you all!
They still make the color wheels. Mom got an electric one a few years ago. It really made the tree look cool!
Every Christmas, my mother used to decorate a small 3 foot (approximate height, looked like Tom’s, above) table top tree that her mother had bought when she was first married. (1916) The tree had a small base and actually had clips where candles would be clamped. Mom used to always say that her family never used candles due to the fire hazard. So, in the 1950’s, the old tree came to my mother.
In addition to the tree, boxes of ornaments and early electric lights were inherited by my mother. As a boy, I used to help my mother decorate the little tree. Some of the ornaments were quite weathered and very tarnished. Some ornaments were homemade out of walnuts covered with colored foil. Although my mother and aunt had boxes of “new” ornaments, my mother preferred the battered ones. Somewhere, my mother got a tree stand in the 1960’s, and the little tree became a little taller and more stable.
Time passed, and the tree became more tattered every year. The lights blew many fuses, until they were no longer used. Branches cracked and broke year after year, until not much was left of the tree. Mom used to wrap garland to make the poor tree look better. She decorated it last in Christmas 2004.
In 2005, my parents died and I needed to clean out and sell the house. I ran across the old tree in a closet, broken and tattered, barely more than a stick. I’m sad to say I threw the “stick” out.
Since they’ve been gone, I learned to appreciate the old, battered things, much more than any new items. I guess it comes from possibly becoming more old and battered myself. We use a small artificial tree also, just to keep with the modest tradition. The old “new” ornaments are now being used. We have several boxes of them, including the “Shiny Brites”.
Merry Christmas to All! May the World find peace!
Just reread the article. The wallpaper on the walls was exactly the same pattern that I did on my mother’s living room in 1971, just before I was drafted. That paper job was the first and last wallpaper job I ever did. It turned out very well. I remember a roll cost $ 3, special order. I stripped and painted the walls in 1994, along with new carpet.
I think it took 12 rolls, under $ 40.
Merry christmas all heres a shot of our tree from last year. Im not at home and didnt take a shot of thes years version.
The wife and I are on Year 15 and Location 4 with our tree. Not bad for $75 in 1998.
My grandparents, “Iris” and “Albert” are likely close to you for length of service. The hot-gluing ornaments I wrote about yesterday? It was her. A letter I wrote to Santa in 1977 (age 5) is stuck to it.
Very cool. That’s a great tradition; Don’t ever replace that tree (the new ones probably aren’t as good, anyway).
I recently inherited my parents old Christmas tree and about 25 years’ worth of ornaments when my mom decided she wanted all new decorations. Score. Now all my childhood holiday memories live on at my house and hopefully will for many years to come.
Merry Christmas everybody!
My parents bought an artificial tree in 1972 and I took it over in 1990. I used it all the way through 2007! What caused me to ditch it was that the stand it sat in broke, and I wasn’t able to fix it or engineer a new stand to work with it.
That tree worked like no other I’ve seen – there was a ring at the top of the pole with holes in it, and the branches hung off that ring and were 8 feet long and hung out at an angle. A second ring on the pole slid up and down the pole and adjusted the angle at which the branches hung so you could have a fatter or skinnier tree.
Merry post-Christmas! Our main family tree is a live one my wife orchestrates in the living room, using a combination of modern and older ornaments. My daughter and I have a skinny little artificial up in the game room that we decorate with the ugliest ornaments we could find over the years. It has the chili pepper lights.
And next to “Poppa’s chair” as I write this is my Mom’s 2 foot fiber-optic tree she proudly displayed her last 5-6 years in the nursing home. When she left us it was the only thing I wanted from her. Mission accomplished.
Merry Christmas all!
I’m sorry I am just now getting around to replying, but I didn’t get home from my trip till yesterday evening and had a lot to catch up on.
Your tree is beautiful! I am such a sucker for vintage 20th century Christmas decorations and such, always have been.
Last Saturday I got to tour the Walter P. Chrysler Museum, and they had a number of vintage Christmas trees on display with the cars, it was a lot of fun getting to see them.
I have been sick about my lack of time that has prevented me from a trip to Auburn Hills for a walk through the WPC museum before they close it to the public in another couple of days. I remembered that you were going and have been jealous as can be. 🙂 As a consolation prize, one of my kids got me a big fat biography of Walter P. Chrysler which I look forward to reading.
Well, if it helps, I took a LOT of pics while I was there, and if Paul would approve, I would love to do a piece on it here.
Oh, and get this, I went into the gift shop, and walked out with a beautiful coffee table book detailing many of the exhibits, and a large refrigerator magnet for the grand total of….$2.90! Combine that with the $8 admission to tour the museum, and I felt like it was money well spent!
You know, perhaps one of these days we could coordinate a trip to Auburn to tour the A-C-D Museum and team up to do a big write up on it…
This posting is awesome it took me back in time, my grandmother had a tree very similar to this one. Her’s was a “Mr. Christmas” brand and I think she bought it the Christmas of 1968, I know my mother was still in high school when she bought it (from pictures I have). She was the first person I knew of that had “theme” tree, she alternated from the gold tree with amber lights to the green and blue themed tree with of course green and blue lights and ornaments.
I was conducting an internet search trying to find a tree like this one for sale. My grandmother threw hers away before I could rescue it; since she passed away in 2005, I get very nostalgic for things that remind me of her. I would love to put one up like this one at least one year.
Thank you, Michael – glad you enjoyed reading about it. Ours will be going up again before I know it. Every once in awhile, I have found myself ambling through a secondhand store (like Goodwill or Salvation Army, where they sell castoffs rather than “antiques” or “vintage”.) It seems to me that I have seen these sorts of things there. However, it may have been long enough ago that they have been scooped up into the Vintage stores. I would bet there are some for sale online. Good luck!
The one I would like to find is one like my own Grandma had – a white fiberglass tree that she got in the early 1960s, then filled with white lights. I have never seen another fiberglass tree – it was baby-bunny-soft when you stroked the branches, but the fibers would come loose and get all over you. Probably cancer causing, too.
Do you have any pics of the original box? I love these old trees like this. Of course I grew up in the 80s as a kid. My mom had a tree much like this one, 7ft tree she had when my older sisters were kids. Later on, once one Christmas when I was probably 7 or 8 my sisters dog knocked the tree down, and broke the wooden pole to the tree. That was it for the tree after its almost 20 year life. 🙁
But in school in kindergarten and 1st grade there were trees like this, some with metal poles and better made slots for the branches.. I have water to start a site about fake trees that aren’t the aluminum trees from the 50s.
Thanks for sharing 🙂
Jason Beard
The tree is still stored in its original box, which is just a big plain brown box with some printing on it. It is sort of amazing that the cardboard box has held up as well as it has. I will see about getting a picture of it.
Your webpage made my day today. I was looking for an artificial Scotch Pine tree and came upon your site. My mother would pay the extra $20 at Christmastime for a real tree, a Scotch Pine. While most trees would have sold for $10, she paid $30. I saw your beautifully decorated tree with the angel on top (my mother too had the angel topper). We are in my mother’s house today and we have the same style windows as you. I had to look twice, as for a moment I thought it was an old photo belonging to my mother. I scrolled down further and saw a picture of a woman, red hair like my mother also. It was all so coincidental, but want to thank you for bringing back so many fond memories for me in just one photo.
The memories you share with the added photos are really cool. I am a collector of Christmas decorations. I believe I collect this type of memorabilia due to the fond memories tied to the happy occasion.
I grew up in a family of real tree purists. Christmastime was and is such a magical time. Memories of me walking the neighborhood looking at all the Christmas lights and seeing families assemble their full artificial trees in their picture windows fascinated me. The idea someone could have a tree up the weekend after thanksgiving made me want one so badly!! My parents weren’t having it however. I can remember buying my own tree for my bedroom. The wooden dowel and wired branches assembled. The mini twinkling lights and few ornaments a had bought in a yard sale. To this day, I assemble my artificial tree. There’s nothing better than those vintage bristle trees.
Thank you for sharing your fond memories.
i would love to have this tree again ours was lost in the storm i have other trees but this one is on the top of my list ill give away all my trees for this one..
Our family had one of those silver Christmas trees with the color wheel in the mid 60s. We never really cared for it because you weren`t supposed to decorate it, but the colors did look good. We gave it to my grandmother, and she decorated it but didn`t use the color wheel. She had it for years until she passed away in 1983,before she was to move in my mother`s basement apartment.And speaking about ornaments,we had and still have many. My favorite is a top shaped plastic one with five disks with rounded tops,the largest one in the middle and spindles on the top and bottom. The center disk has window like openings around the side of the rim. Whenever I ask someone what this ornament looks like,everybody says a “flying saucer” or a “ufo.” Very cool, wish I was able to post a picture of it. Maybe by Christmas, I`ll learn how to do it.
We celebrated 49 years with our 7 1/2 foot Deluxe Scotch Pine artificial tree this year of 2016. It was the first Christmas tree of our marriage, which was January 7, 1967. We lost the box to a flooding incident, but have used a moving garment box from one of our moves for 46 years. I think we paid an astronomical $36. for the tree at the time, but in retrospect, I think that might have included some ornaments as well. One of our children turned out to be allergic to the preservative they put on live trees, so it was a no-brainer to keep this lovely tree a part of our Christmas celebration. We have no plans to abandon it, so who knows how long it may last.
Do NOT get rid of your tree! I inherited my parent’s 1967 scotch pine tree (purchased at Sears) and I had it for several years then I decided to get a new artificial tree (smaller branches that were hinged…didn’t last very long either!). I gave my old tree to my neighbors. I’ve regretted that ever since! I wish I had it back!