The earliest artificial Christmas trees were feather Christmas trees. They originated in Germany in the 1880s and 1890s. when deforestation was becoming a problem. These feather trees were made with goose feathers that would be dyed green and then attached to branches made of wire. The wire branches were then attached to a dole, that would serve as the trunk of the "tree." The feather Christmas tree would be brought to the United States by German immigrants. They proved popular for a time, to the point that by the 1920s feather Christmas tree could be ordered from the Sears Roebuck Catalog and were even sold at department stores. Feather Christmas tress varied in size from two inches to thirty inches high. The feather trees sold by Sears sometimes included hand-blown glass ornaments and still later lights. Today many feather Christmas trees are valuable antiques.
The popularity of feather Christmas trees would fade over time, perhaps because they did not look exactly like real trees. They would become popular again in the Fifties for a time and then once more in the Eighties. Of course, it was in the Fifties that that saw the emergence of another sort of artificial tree. It is frequently claimed that a company called the Addis Brush Company introduced the "brush tree" in the 1930s. It appears that this is not true. According to research conducted by the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Delaware, there never was an Addis Brush Company in the United States, and hence no patents for artificial Christmas trees were ever assigned to them. There is a company called Addis Housewares in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1870, Addis Housewares is credited with introducing the first modern toothbrush and or much fof their history manufactured other brushes as well. Correspondence between the Hagley Museum and Addis Housewares indicated that the company did not make artificial Christmas trees in the 1930s. In fact, they would not make artificial trees until the 1970s and then only for a brief time. What is more, they were sold under the name of a subsidiary, not Addis.
It would appear that the credit for the earliest brush Christmas trees should instead go to American Brush Company. American Brush Company would founded in 1910 in Portland, Oregon. The company manufactured paint brushes and janitorial supplies. It was in the 1950s that American Brush Company began making brushes for something other than painting or cleaning. According to an article in The New York Times, in the late Fifties there was a rather odd fad in design whereby "...shop designers were using millions of small multicoloured brushes, which when assembled in department store windows, looked, in his words, 'like miniature pastel waves'." Of course, like most fads, this eventually came to an end.
It was then that American Brush Company decided to change the machines used to make these brushes to make artificial Christmas trees instead. Their original artificial Christmas trees were made of PVC and did not look much like real trees. This, combined with the late Fifties/early Sixties fad for aluminium Christmas trees, meant that American Brush Company did not sell many of their early artificial Christmas trees. A senior machinist named Si Spiegel, was sent to close the factory that made artificial Christmas trees, but instead reported back that American Brush Company could make money with the product. As a result, one of his bosses gave Si Spiegel his own division, American Tree and Wreath, which would manufacture artificial Christmas trees and wreathes. Here it must be noted that Si Spiegel is an altogether remarkable man. He was a B-17 pilot with 849th Bomb Squadron of the 490th Bomb Group during World War II. At one point he and his crew crashed in Poland, then occupied by the Soviets, and had to make a daring escape. Si Spiegel is Jewish, so he never celebrated Christmas.
Regardless, he wanted to improve the artificial trees that American Brush Company was making, even bringing in real trees so that American Brush could make their trees look more realistic. Eventually he succeeded in making artificial Christmas trees that looked much more like the real thing. By the mid-Seventies they were making 800,000 trees a year. Of course, since then the artificial Christmas tree has become much more popular.
Of course, the Christmas trees made of PVC were not the only artificial Christmas trees to emerge in the 1950s. It was in 1955 that Modern Coatings, Inc. received a patent for an aluminium Christmas tree. Their trees were expensive, costing $80 in the mid-Fifties, which would be $920 now. In 1958 the toys sales manager of Aluminum Specialty Company, Tom Gannon, saw one of the aluminium trees made by Modern Coatings in a Ben Franklin Store in Chicago. Aluminum Specialty made pots, pans, and toys. They were already making aluminum Christmas ornaments. Tom Gannon then bought the tree and returned to the headquarters of Aluminum Specialty Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
Using the Modern Coatings tree that Tom Gannon had bought, the engineers at Aluminum Specialty were able to figure out how to make an aluminum tree that was much cheaper. In fact, it would cost less that $12. Introduced at the American Toy Fair in March 1959, Aluminum Specialty's tree proved to bet a hit. By 1964 they were making about $150,00 aluminium Christmas trees. Unfortunately, the popularity of the aluminium Christmas tree would prove to be short-lived, largely because of a classic Christmas TV special. To large degree A Charlie Brown Christmas was a protest against the commercialization of Christmas, and in the special the aluminium Christmas tree was used as a symbol of that commercialization. Rather than get an aluminium tree, Charlie Brown chooses to get a rather scraggly real tree. Sales for aluminium Christmas trees dropped precipitously after A Charlie Brown Christmas had aired. The heyday of the aluminium Christmas tree was over by 1967. Once viewed as a symbol of commercialism and the epitome of bad taste, aluminium Christmas trees would come to be regarded by some with nostalgia.
Since the 1950s artificial Christmas trees have continued to evolve. The first patent for a fibre-optic tree was filed in 1973 by Albert V. Sadaca and Bernard Paulfus. Despite this, fibre optic trees would not become popular until the Naughts. It was in the early 1990s that Boto Company, then the largest manufacturer of artificial Christmas trees, began making pre-lit Christmas trees, which were sold at Target stores.
There are concerns about the environmental impact of Christmas trees made of PVC, and there is still debates on whether real trees are superior to artificial ones. Regardless, artificial Christmas trees have become a part of the American landscape during the holiday season, and they don't seem likely to disappear any time soon.
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