page_title: Aluminum Christmas tree
section_title: Re-emergence
hierarchical_section_title: Aluminum Christmas tree / History / Re-emergence
caption_attribution_description: An aluminum Christmas tree in the permanent collection of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
context_page_description: An aluminum Christmas tree is a type of artificial Christmas tree that was popular in the United States from 1958 until about the mid-1960s. As its name suggests, the tree is made of aluminum, featuring foil needles and illumination from below via a rotating color wheel.
  The aluminum Christmas tree was used as a symbol of the commercialization of Christmas in the highly acclaimed and successful 1965 television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, which discredited its suitability as a holiday decoration. By the mid-2000s aluminum trees found a secondary market online, often selling for high premiums. The trees have also appeared in museum collections.
context_section_description: By 1989, it was not uncommon to find aluminum Christmas trees for sale in yard sales or at estate sales being sold for as little as 25 cents. In recent years the aluminum Christmas tree has seen a re-emergence in popularity. Collectors began buying and selling the trees, especially on online auction web sites. A rare 7-foot-tall pink aluminum Christmas tree sold on the Internet for $3,600 in 2005.
caption: 1960s tree in the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
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