Augmenting Christmas: Artificial Trees and the Lure of Perpetual Nature

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It’s that time of year again! That’s right: the time of year where many are struck by the nostalgic allure of fir trees so much that they erect petroleum-based natural replicas of them in their homes, and keep them on prominent display for weeks until everything is packed back up into a box put into storage and forgotten for another 12 months. 

The human desire to adorn domestic habitats using potentially hazardous natural resources is what’s providing the foundation for my present research focus on Augmented Nature, first sketched out in my recent article for Technology and Culture on the history of astroturf. Augmented Nature rejects the idea of there being a “pure” form of the natural world and instead supplements and simulates environmental material culture with objects that appear to better it with more vibrant, more verdant, objects that reject natural cycles to have eternal, mess-free lives.

German feather Christmas tree, Nightflyer (Klappbarer Weihnachtsbaum als Feldpost, Erster Weltkrieg. Ausstellungsstück im Kreismuseums des Kreises Steinburg, dem Prinzeßhof)

Because some of us are currently surrounded by natural and artificial seasonal replicas of the natural world, I thought we could explore the history of artificial Christmas trees. To do that, we need to go back to 19th century Europe, which was experiencing a crisis of trees. Germany had already established a tradition of bringing fir trees into the home at Christmastime as a means of celebrating the season. Because of the critical tree shortage across Europe, this tradition was under threat. Instead of developing different traditions of seasonal revelry, Germans began making fake trees out of goose feathers by dying the feathers green and tufting the fibres to make them appear needle- and branch-like, stuck to a metal wire trunk. This was one of the earliest attempts to simulate natural evergreens for aesthetic domestic use. Feather trees were not very sturdy and couldn’t hold more than a few paper ornaments, but they promised longevity and cleanliness, directly contrasting natural evergreens.

An aluminum Christmas tree in the permanent collection of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, c. 1960s

The First and Second World Wars made “German” a brand to avoid in Western Europe and North America, however, and feather trees fell out of fashion as a result. Those wars also prevented a rush of Christmas trees coming to market, as timber remained a restricted wartime resource during the conflicts and their respective reconstruction eras. Aluminum was also a precious natural resource required in reconstruction eras, but in 1959, as North America moved beyond rationed resources, there was a real craze for aluminum Christmas trees, tapping into the optimistic space race era and postwar affluence. Aluminum trees were intensely popular across western Europe and North America initially, but in 1965 the Charlie Brown Christmas television special aired across North America and featured aluminum trees as an allegory to critique the over-commercialization of Christmas, plummeting sales. 

What I find particularly fascinating about the aluminum tree craze, is that they took the basic structure of an evergreen tree using pre-drilled holes at varying angles to insert individual branches pointing upwards with thin metallic foil wrapping wire branches to create bulk. Then they went completely off-script and shoved the artificiality of each element in your face with silver, bright pink, and vibrant blue metal needles meant to reflect light from their accompanying floor-level spotlights that shone through plastic colour wheels. 

As strange as some of these simulations of natural fir trees may appear, they highlight problems with bringing real trees into the home, some small and some severe. To start small, the simple fact of cutting down an evergreen tree, bringing it into your home, and keeping it in your sitting room meant that sap dripped onto carpet and pine needles fell throughout the season. On the more severe side of things, Christmas trees were rarely placed in water until the late 20th century, which meant they dried out and became even more flammable than they already were, especially as they were often placed in a sitting room with an open fire. Candles on Christmas trees were an entrenched tradition across Europe and North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which added an additional layer of risk, especially considering the majority of ornaments were made of paper or hair. When electricity was introduced into domestic spaces, electric lights replaced candles, but only minimized the danger because of the inherent risk of a malfunctioning cable or socket. The risk of fire was so severe that some insurance companies refused coverage by 1908, and annual columns in newspapers across North America encouraged revelers to invest in asbestos-based ornaments (of course!) to ensure a safe holiday season.

Artificial Christmas Tree Patents (US), 1882-1972, Hagley Library

In the 1950s, a ladder manufacturer named William Augustus Warren developed a process for molding individual simulations of evergreen branches with polyethylene and high-impact styrene plastic. Unlike metal, wood, glass, or feathers, plastics were so incredibly malleable that their ability to simulate individual pine needles was supercharged, and Warren’s 1958 patent had over 32 thousand needles on a 6-foot-tall tree. Now, 32 thousand needles is significantly more needles than a natural 6-foot evergreen would have on its branches at one time, but none of these needles would fall to the floor over the holiday season, there would be no sap dripping onto domestic carpets, you wouldn’t have to remember to water it, your ornaments could be placed wherever you wanted them to be, and while polyethylene is flammable, the patent claimed the tree was fire-resistant. This was a better tree than anything a forest could provide, and it came with a sachet of natural pine scent to cement this as a superior simulated tree, so closely resembling a better nature for three of the senses: sight, smell, and touch. Warren’s “Lif-Time Christmas Tree,” as it was called, would keep your family safe, would last forever, and would fold down into a 17-inch-long box. Tapping into the aluminum tree craze of the era, these trees came in standard green, white, silver, blue, and pink. Warren had factories in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and his patent is indicative of the “next wave” of simulations ushered in by the Plastics Age.

WA Warren, 1958

As Warren developed his patent for his polyethylene tree, a dwindling sales crisis at the American Brush Machine Company prompted its CEOs to repurpose their assembly machines away from their standard twisted wire toilet and bottle brushes to tap into the growing artificial tree market. The technology required to make toilet brushes doesn’t quite make realistic evergreen branches, even if polyvinyl plastic was used to simulate individual needles. The trial run of artificial trees was a disaster, and the company sent a senior machinist, Si Spiegel, to shut down operations. Instead of shutting things down, Spiegel identified a problem in the production process, which he believed he could fix. He convinced company heads to give him some time with the machines and the polyvinyl and set to work, bringing real evergreen trees into the workshop so he could study, simulate, compare, and augment.

Si Spiegel, Imitation Christmas Tree, 1972

For Spiegel, this was a question of mechanics, and through his close study of evergreens, he set up American Tree and Wreath in the mid-1960s, just as the public’s affection for colourful aluminum trees began to wane. Spiegel’s patent, filed on a balmy July day in 1972, was for the tree that made American Tree and Wreath one of the leading artificial tree producers over the rest of the 20th century, producing over 800,000 trees a year by 1972. By the late 1980s, his company was generating annual sales of $54 million and when he sold his Hudson Tree Co in 1992, he was a multimillionaire. 

Part of the appeal of American Tree and Wreath’s trees, aside from their close resemblance to natural evergreens, was Spiegel himself. A Second World War veteran who was able to transition from the Air Force to the factory floor and industrial fortune; a Jewish man who didn’t celebrate Christmas but who now put one of his evergreen simulations up in his home each December, illustrating how the Christian festival had become an integral part of American culture: this was the ultimate mid-to late-20th century American dream. Integral to this narrative, of course, is the fact that he used polyvinyl plastic to simulate—and perfect!—individual pine needles in such a way that it was difficult to tell if the tree was real or augmented. Warren’s earlier innovation, with its 32 thousand needles was so dense that it was a less believable simulation than Spiegel’s. Instead of going for an extreme simulation, Spiegel developed the technology needed to mold plastics into natural-looking needles and branches, which could be adjusted to more closely simulate the natural variations of an evergreen. His innovations were a bold declaration of what the Plastics Age could bring to domestic spaces to make life easier, brighter, and more predictable than nature offered. 

The history of artificial Christmas trees illustrates shifting societal priorities, and the ways humans have historically sought a more perfect form of the natural world. Today, While Canada is a net producer of farmed fur trees for seasonal use, between 15-20% of North Americans get a natural evergreen tree for annual Christmas celebrations, and this number remains fairly steady across the global north. This is compared to 75-80% of domestic homes that feature artificial Christmas trees year on year. The cultural shift promised by the Plastics Age has happened for Christmas trees in ways it hasn’t (yet?) happened for other plastic simulations of the natural world like artificial grass turf. Is this a “better” tree that can offer a cleaner, safer holiday season? Does it trick us into forgetting that each summer thousands of hectares of forest, many of them carbon-offset forests, burn out of control in places like Canada because of the impact humans have had on the world since the fossil-fuel-intense Plastics Age began? Are consumers aware that it can take hundreds of thousands of years for a plastic Christmas tree to decompose in the environment? What do we gain and what do we lose through simulations of the natural world? The answer to these questions may be found in the wise words of the Charlie Brown philosopher Linus, who once said, “Gee, do they still make wooden Christmas trees? [They] don’t seem to fit the modern spirit.”

Feature Image: “the artificial christmas tree in my lobby” by elPadawan is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
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Jessica van Horssen

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of History at McMaster University m. My research interests are in transnational environmental health and contamination, and I always seek to blend historical research with public engagement. I’m currently a Co-Investigator on the Mining Danger SSHRC Insight Grant, while also developing an augmented natures project. My monograph, A Town Called Asbestos: Environmental Change, Health, and Resilience in a Resource Community was published by UBC Press in 2016.

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