It’s that time of year when many folks are thinking about getting a Christmas tree, myself included. When I was growing up, mostly people had real trees and our family was no exception. There were a number of places to get a tree back then. If you knew someone who had a farm or other rural land you might be able to go cut one down yourself. Most people, however, bought one. There were many lots selling trees in Minneapolis back then. Often they were run by a local Boy Scout troop or a YMCA group. The other place to buy a Christmas tree was at the Minneapolis Farmer’s Market, which was considerably larger back then. A tree back in the 1950s would usually cost just a few dollars. There were a few different varieties of trees that would be used for Christmas trees. I think what we usually had at our house was a Spruce. It had short needles and well-spaced branches but it also shed those needles easily, especially if you didn’t remember to water it all the time. I remember Scotch, White and Red Pines also being used for Christmas trees.
Some folks had “flocked” trees in the 1950s. These flocked trees were sprayed with a fine, artificial powder to make them look like it was covered in snow. Some also had pink or light blue flocking. I had an aunt who would always have a flocked tree, some years pink with red ornaments and some years light blue with dark blue ornaments.
Another type of Christmas tree showed up in the 1950s – the aluminum tree. This tree was made of aluminum, featuring foil needles. Because the foil needles were flammable, you couldn’t put lights on these trees so there was illumination from below using a separate light which had a rotating color wheel. One year everyone in my dad’s family received one of these trees from an aunt who worked at a Red Owl store that was selling them. When my dad brought it home, my mom said it wasn’t a real Christmas tree and she wouldn’t allow it in our living room! So we had a real tree in the living room and the aluminum tree was put up out in the front porch along with its color wheel.
Once you got your tree home and into a stand with water, it was time to decorate it. While some families put a star on the top of their tree, my family put an angel on ours. My mom had bought this angel, which was made of spun glass, at the end of WWII and it has been on either my parents’ tree or mine every year to this day. Spun glass can get into your skin so you have to be very careful to hold it by the cardboard tube it’s attached to, to put it on the top of the tree.
While historically candles were often put on Christmas trees, they were replaced by electric strings of lights around the 1920s. The lights on our tree were a combination of small C-6 bulbs and bubble lights. The bubble lights were shaped like a candle and would have bubbles going from bottom to the top once they warmed up. These lights were very popular in the 1950s and ‘60s with the bubbling effect created by heating methylene chloride to a low boiling point inside the glass tube of the light bulb.
Ornaments on a Christmas tree can take on many forms. Some folks like a very organized looking tree. Our family tree, however, was always a hodgepodge of store-bought glass ornaments, a few that came from ancestors and homemade ones us kids made. Our tree also always had tinsel (which some families called icicles). Tinsel placing could sometimes cause family arguments with some thinking it should be placed one strand at a time on each branch while others thought it should be just thrown on in clumps so it looked like real icicles. I always loved putting it on the tree, but after Christmas it often clogged up the vacuum cleaner.
Whether you have a Christmas tree or you celebrate some other traditions or holidays here’s wishing you wonderful Season’s Greetings!