Aluminum Christmas trees regain their shine in exhibition

Like a TV antenna's wad of tinfoil magically coming to life, aluminum Christmas trees sparkled and glowed in living rooms and front windows during their heyday in the 1960s and '70s. No need to traipse out to a tree lot and wrestle one home tied to the car roof. No needles littering the carpet. No need to worry about the family dog drinking out of the stand.

Then, like any fad, they wore out their yuletide welcome and were forgotten in attics, tossed out in the trash or sold at garage sales for 50 cents.

Now, they're hip again in a retro "Mad Men" way. Some aluminum Christmas trees are selling for $1,000 on eBay. Tapping into nostalgia for a time when Christmas trees looked as silvery and shiny as an astronaut, the Wisconsin Historical Society Museum is opening an exhibit on Tuesday featuring 20 Wisconsin-made aluminum trees.

Billed as the largest public exhibition of Evergleam aluminum Christmas trees, the exhibit will include rare 2-foot tabletop trees, a selection of 4-, 6- and 8-foot aluminum trees, accessories such as rotating tree stands and multicolored light wheels as well as advertising and packaging. The exhibit also includes trees in gold, green and even pink — the holy grail of Evergleams. Because few people bought pink trees, few were made, which now makes them very rare and valuable.

"I'm pretty sure this is the largest collection of Evergleams since a 1960s Christmas tree show," said curator Joe Kapler, who hasn't seen a pink Evergleam come on the market since 2005.

Manufactured by Manitowoc-based Aluminum Specialty Co., which made housewares and toys, Evergleam trees were designed to be light enough for women to lift boxes containing the stand, a wood pole covered in aluminum foil, 90 to 100 branches in paper sleeves and a colored light wheel. Adorned with the phrase "Aluminum For Lasting Beauty," the package proclaimed them the "safety tree" because they were nonflammable.

Aluminum Specialty "experimented with all kinds of new products every year, and it just exploded," said Kapler. "They were kind of like the Coca-Cola of aluminum Christmas trees."

Like any fad, aluminum trees ran their course, and Aluminum Specialty stopped making them in the early '70s. In the last decade, surely fueled in part by the enduring affection for "A Charlie Brown Christmas," they've become cool again.

Because of the state connection, the Wisconsin Historical Society began collecting them in 2004 and put together a small display at its museum on Madison's Capitol square in 2005. The last exhibit was four years ago. This is the first time 20 of the trees will be displayed.

" Waak, who spent 25 years with Aluminum Specialty before it closed in the late '90s, donated a few items from his personal collection for this year's exhibit. He's flabbergasted to see something that sold for $10 half a century ago now in a museum.