It's a heavy little metal box, round, about the size of a cake pan. On the front is a big disk divided into colored plastic panels: red, blue, green, and yellow. Behind the disk sits a bright bulb.
Plug it in and two things happen. The bulb lights up, and a small motor starts turning the disk, slowly, with a quiet hum.
It lived in a box in the attic or the basement for eleven months of the year. Then, sometime after Thanksgiving, it came out and took its place on the living room floor.
Three Clues
- It was never meant to be looked at directly. It was meant to point at something.
- It solved a problem that only existed because of a new material.
- The thing it pointed at was usually silver, and it sparkled.
What People Usually Guess
A stage light. Close. It works on the same idea as a theater spotlight with colored gels.
A party light for dancing. Reasonable, and some people probably used it that way. But that wasn't its job.
A heat lamp. It does get warm. Not the point, though.
The Answer: It's a Color Wheel for an Aluminum Christmas Tree
This was the light for the silver tree. The color wheel sat on the floor a few feet away and washed an aluminum Christmas tree in slowly changing colors: red, then blue, then green, then gold.
Why Aluminum Trees Needed One
You couldn't decorate an aluminum tree the usual way. Stringing electric lights on a tree made of metal was asking for shocks and short circuits.
So the light came from outside the tree instead. The shiny branches caught the color and threw it around the room, which was the whole effect people were after.
Where the Silver Tree Came From
In December 1958, a toy sales manager named Tom Gannon from the Aluminum Specialty Company of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, spotted a metal Christmas tree in a Ben Franklin store in Chicago. It was too expensive and bulky to sell to most families, so his company built a better, cheaper version.
They showed it at the American Toy Fair in March 1959, rushed it into production, and sold out that first Christmas. In 1960, the trees got a brand name: Evergleam.
The company also sold the accessories that made them work: revolving stands and color wheels. According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, Evergleam held about 60 to 65 percent of the U.S. and Canadian market through the 1960s. Most were silver. Pink ones were among the rarest.
How It Worked
- Set the tree up in a corner or a front window.
- Put the color wheel on the floor a few feet away, aimed up at the tree.
- Plug it in. The bulb lit, and the motor turned the colored disk in front of it.
- Turn off the room lights and watch the tree change color, over and over.
Many families added glass ornaments in a single color, so the tree looked like one big shimmering shape.
Why You Don't See Them Anymore
Aluminum tree sales peaked in 1964 and 1965. That's also when A Charlie Brown Christmas aired, in 1965, with Charlie Brown passing up the shiny aluminum trees for a sad little real one.
The show is often blamed for killing the silver tree. Historians at the Wisconsin Historical Society aren't so sure, pointing out that sales stayed strong after it aired. Tastes simply changed, and by the end of the decade, most families had moved on.
Still Got One?
Aluminum trees and color wheels are now real collector's items, and working color wheels are prized because the motors wear out. The Wisconsin Historical Museum even built a whole exhibit around the Evergleam, called "Ever Gleaming."
If there's a long, skinny box in the attic with "tree" written on the side in marker, it might be worth a look.
Did your family have the silver tree, or a real one? Who won that argument?
Sources
- "History of Ever Gleaming," Wisconsin Historical Museum
- "Pink Evergleam Aluminum Christmas Tree," Wisconsin Historical Society
- "How Charlie Brown killed the aluminum Christmas tree," Associated Press, Dec. 2017
- "Oh Aluminum Christmas Tree, Your Branches Are Ever Gleaming," WPR, Dec. 2019
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