A vintage Evergleam silver aluminum tree is Christmas gold
When I was a child in the 1970s, Christmas Eve was spent in the cramped confines of my maternal grandparents’ home.
It was a source of pride for me that the silver aluminum Christmas tree with the mesmerizing color wheel projecting onto it in Memere and Pepere’s family room had once been owned by my parents, before they switched to natural trees.
Aluminum trees already were in declining popularity by this time, mocked as a symbol of over-commercialization as they were in the 1965 TV special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
Sorry, Charlie, but the silver tree remained cool to me. While my wife, Sara, and I always had fresh trees, we picked up a cheap imported silver tree approximately 15 years ago and still use it. We haven’t had a fresh tree since we started Stay Apparel in 2017, wishing to protect our inventory but perhaps overstating the risk of spiders jumping from tree to tee.
In 2020, we moved into downtown Hershey, where we are renovating a 1931 bungalow that needed some love but was historically intact. From kitchen to bathroom, paint colors to artwork, we’ve tried to be true to that vintage spirit.
We wanted an authentic U.S.-made aluminum tree, which I acquired on eBay just after Christmas 2020.
So our six-foot, 43-branch Evergleam tree, manufactured sometime between 1959 and 1971 in Manitowac, Minn., is making its debut for us this holiday season. (Cooler still, some of the glass ornaments adorning it were made by a company called Paragon in Lewiston, Maine, where I was born.)
The Ford of aluminum trees
The Aluminum Specialty Co. made 100,000 to 150,000 Evergleams every year. It wasn’t the only source of aluminum trees — Arandell Products, for instance, made Silver Glow trees in Philadelphia — but the most famous.
Aluminum Specialty turned the aluminum Christmas tree that a company called Modern Coatings had developed as a department store prop into a consumer product.
“Aluminum Specialty was to aluminum trees what the Ford Motor Company was to automobiles,” taking a good idea and making it great, according to “The Evergleam Book,” by Theron Georges. (You also can buy a copy of the book directly from Georges on eBay; he’ll sign it for you, too, if you ask.)
In the birthplace of Evergleam, they celebrate Manitowac Aluminum Kitsch-mas, which includes a downtown display of the trees dubbed “Evergleams on Eighth.”
We put up our Evergleam on the day after Thanksgiving. We complemented it with a new color wheel (alas, it’s imported) that brings me back to my childhood.
But this is better. Rather than just a Christmas Eve treat, our silver Evergleam is with us for the duration of the season.