Christmas circa 1959
Museum hosts collector’s vintage aluminum holiday specimens
Aluminum trees sparkle in “Space Age Christmas Trees” at Houston’s 1940 Air Terminal Museum.
No other relic of Christmases past blazes across the galaxies of Theron Georges’ memory like the aluminum tree his parents had demoted to the rec room of their home in San Antonio’s Castle Hills suburb by the time he came along in the 1970s.
He remembers lying underneath that tree, resting his head on glitter-spangled cotton batting and gazing upward into the silvery wonder, soothed by the hum of the electric color wheel that cast changing colors on the shimmering branches.
Now a corporate pilot who lives in Houston, Georges suspects his late mother sent that tree out one day with the trash. But not a Christmas goes by that he doesn’t flip through the old family albums to find the faded photographs of it, trying to reclaim a little childhood magic.
Largely because of that, Georges began acquiring a few aluminum trees of his own 15 years ago. OK, more than that. He geeked out, scouring eBay for vintage treasures to build a collection that has become one of the most complete of its kind. He also wrote and published “The Evergleam Book,” a definitive source on a leading brand so popular its name also became generic. Evergleams were the Kleenex, Xerox and Coke of aluminum trees.
To celebrate the brand’s 60th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission this year, Georges has installed 30 of his most prized trees at Houston’s 1940 Air Terminal Museum.
The second-floor spaces of Hobby Airport’s original terminal are raw and gutted to their brick walls. They have big windows, so they are naturally bright. But a few days before “Space Age Christmas Trees” opened to the public, the rooms also were lit up like — well, a midcentury-modern Christmas.
They held a quirky and dazzling forest of silver, gold, blue, green, pink
and multicolored trees. Some of the models were further distinguished by the styles of their branch tips (blue frost, fountains, pom-pons and bow tips); their needle designs (plain, faceted, a mattelike
“frosty” or slightly shaggy swirl); or their general shape (from a flat, flushmounted Peacock to the svelte Slim Line and a super-deluxe Tru-Taper with variable-length branches).
Stiffer than reproduction Mylar and tinsel trees made today, vintage aluminum trees capture the zeitgeist of post-war optimism that was still strong in the late 1950s. Sturdy American values had yet to be questioned, and families embraced all things shiny and new. They were on the cusp of technological revolution: When the first silver tree hit the market in 1959, the idea of sending a man to the moon had begun to leap from fiction to fact.
But as a lot of consumers quickly discovered, technology had its drawbacks, too. The 6-foot First Edition tree in an all-silver room of early Evergleams looks simple aesthetically. Made for only one year, it was sold “partially assembled,” which meant it arrived as a spray-painted trunk in two pieces, with a three-piece stand, 94 individually wrapped “twist-open, zip-down” branches and a four-page instruction manual.
Georges found his First Edition on eBay two years ago, still in its original, unopened box. Putting it together took five hours. On the plus side, he did not have to string it with lights. Doing that to any aluminum tree might burn down the house.
Nor did he have to decorate it. “Camps are fiercely divided about whether or not you should put ornaments on these trees,” Georges said. “My mom and dad did, and they were beautiful. I choose not to; I like them in their organic form. I really, really love their architecture, simplicity, elegance, understatedness.”
‘This is Christmas’
It came from America’s heartland, as glowing in 1959 as the Russian spacecraft orbiting the moon, sparked by a company fully attuned to the business of Christmas.
Aluminum Specialty was based in Manitowoc, Wis., a place already widely known as Tinsel Town, USA, because the National Tinsel Manufacturing Co. had been making decorations there since the beginning of the century.
Tom Gannon, the leader of Aluminum Specialty’s Toy and Decoration Division, saw the light during an industry lunch shortly before Christmas 1958. He was besotted with a handmade aluminum tree designed as a merchandising prop for stores. It was too heavy and expensive to mass-produce, but Aluminum Specialty had just the guys to reverse-engineer a more viable version.
The company’s chief engineer had flown B-29 bombers during World War II. He designed trees with needles inspired by chaff, the little aluminum strips the Air Force dropped through skies during the war so its planes wouldn’t be detected by radar.
Aluminum Specialty had a prototype ready for the biggest trade show in
March 1959, and its regional salesman knew just how to pitch it: “This is Christmas,” he assured wholesalers. “It does what Christmas is supposed to do. It makes you feel good.” As Georges recounts in his book, one buyer from Minnesota placed a $50,000 order the first day.
Working with a handful of other companies on parts and processes, Aluminum Specialty scrambled to meet demand for the First Edition tree. By Christmas that year, Americans could buy the silver beauty in four sizes that cost from $5-$25, pocket friendly if not entirely user friendly.
The company introduced an easier-to-assemble version the next year, officially launching the Evergleam brand. At its peak, the company churned out 300,000 shiny trees annually, keeping a 65 percent market share by continually reinventing its product line, Georges said, “but competitors went to great lengths to steal the remaining 35 percent.”
He pointed out a few spectacular competitors: the Tomar Imperial Arctic Star, which has reverse pompons; a Yulecraft Fantasy Tree with hooped blue branches; a tri-colored Rainbow by Revlis, which is “silver” spelled backwards; a demure flocked tree with cranberries on the tips.
“Our last gallery is amazing,” Georges said. “I like to say that rare is a relative scale, from somewhat rare to medium rare to preposterously rare. Two of these trees I would call preposterously rare.”
His 7-foot, Stainless Metlcraft black aluminum tree is one. The other is a Red Star with red and blue needles. That room also holds a “very, very rare” Snappit Spectramatic color wheel —“a piece of art in itself,” Georges said.
For the gadget-minded, all the color wheels are a world unto themselves. Among the mechanical marvels: a Carey McFallbrand Magic Lantern light projector and a Spartus Electrolife, designed to “bring life into aluminum Christmas trees” by making them shake.
The beginning of the end
In spite of the wild inventions, the market for aluminum trees lost its luster surprisingly fast. The glitzy fakes were destined to flame out like the Sputnik IV orbiter that burned up in Earth’s atmosphere above Wisconsin in 1962, dropping a hot, 20-pound metal chunk — ironically enough — onto Eighth Street in Manitowoc.
Georges pegs the beginning of the aluminum tree’s end to 1965 and the debut of the animated TV special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” In the show’s defining moment, after Lucy has demanded a shiny, pink tree, Charlie brings back a sad-looking but real specimen: The genuine holiday spirit was warm and human, not commercial.
The mood of the country had darkened. A president had been assassinated. Another war had dawned. People were protesting, and riots were brewing.
Aluminum Specialty stopped producing Evergleams in 1971, after a run of 12 years. And its savvy executives no doubt knew it was a fad. As Georges’ book documents, the company introduced a more real-looking, plastic line called Evergreen in 1962, promoted even that early as the “newest Christmas tree sensation.”
Along the museum’s mezzanine, Georges has installed several vignettes of vintage furniture and fashions, borrowed from friends, so visitors have a sense of the room settings where aluminum trees starred.
One of the gems there is an old-fashioned-looking “brick” fireplace made of printed cardboard. It’s topped with a swirly, spacey-looking “candolier,” a reproduction MiroStar Spider with authentic, 1940s Matchless Wonder Star lights.
Next to the fireplace sits a vintage turntable with a complete set of “Firestone Christmas Albums” that visitors can play. The tire company produced the records as an in-store promotion from 1961 to 1968.
Georges also has hung a few portraits of aluminumtree luminaries alongside pictures of diverse Americans enjoying their trees. “I like putting faces to the production of these things that seem so distant,” he said. “And I like to show how the aluminum Christmas tree transcended regional tastes and social classes.”
As it turns out, Jeanne Gannon Silver, a daughter of the aluminum-tree mastermind Tom Gannon, lives in Clear Lake. When she was growing up in Manitowoc, Christmas brought a 4-foot pink aluminum tree with Santa ornaments to her family’s dining-room buffet, a gold one with felt apples to the paneled basement and a “glorious,” 7-foot silver version with rotating lights to the living room.
Silver would rather have had just one real and fragrant tree. But her parents didn’t let her forget that aluminum trees gave them a comfortable life. They weren’t about fantasy, she said. “For us, it was reality.”
At last count, Georges’ collection contained 70 trees. He owns almost one of every type sold by Aluminum Specialty — the exception being the elusive Burgundy-Blue Evergleam. “There are presently two known specimens held in private collections, one in the northwestern burbs of Chicago and one in Hilton Head (S.C.),” he said. Meaning the Burgundy-Blue Evergreen is preposterously rare.
But Georges recently acquired another Evergleam piece he’d been missing: a foil star called the Holiday Decoration, designed to be hung on windows or walls or above mantels. It came to him via Facebook, where his page often fills with questions from beginning collectors or people who’ve found a shiny relic in the attic.
One might expect Georges’ home to be a glittering showplace this time of year. Not so, he said. He doesn’t plan to put up even one of his trees for Christmas.
“I’d rather them be here and share them with people,” he said. “I’m very into Christmas, but I’ve had enough with the setup.”
“I like to show how the aluminum Christmas tree transcended regional tastes and social classes.”
Theron Georges, collector and exhibition curator