The Battle of the Tin Monster

Growing up, I did not want an artificial Christmas tree. Neither did my sisters or my father. My mother did.

So, of course, we got a fake tree.

This battle was fought in the 1960s when the cool, new decorating idea was a silver aluminum Christmas tree. It was the Cabbage Patch Kid of Christmas trees, ugly and mesmerizing at the same time. The crowning touch was a revolving color wheel. As the wheel turned, the silver reflected the blue, red, yellow, and green colors.

One of our neighbors had one, and my mother was enchanted.

“It’s so beautiful,” she gushed. “And no needles clogging up the vacuum.”

While my mother was not a great cook, she was a fanatical house cleaner. No muss, no dust, and no pine needles were allowed in her spotless house.

Against the objections of the rest of her family, she bought one.

“No more mess, no water spills on my carpet, and no trips out in the cold to find a perfect tree that doesn’t exist,” she said. “You just open the box and pop it up.”

It may have been Ma’s tree, but Dad was the one who had to “pop it up.” My father never swore in front of his women, but that tree bested him. As he sorted out the various lengths of branches and fought to insert them properly in their slots, little puffs of smoke wafted up from his ever-present pipe along with a string of words I didn’t know he knew.

Decorating the tree was simple. The large pink balls went on the bottom third of the tree, medium balls in the center, and little ones on the top third. The box of ornaments used with the real tree lay forgotten in the attic. No Hummels, no glass balls that weren’t pink, and no handmade macaroni ornaments were permitted to mar the simplicity of what we kids called the Tin Monster.

My mother spent several years enjoying the monstrosity while us kids snickered about her taste behind her back. Trust me, we never snickered in front of her.

It’s funny, though, the Tin Monster did not make the move from South Chicago to South Holland with the rest of the family.

Trees in the lean times

During the first few years Jeff and I were married, we rarely had space and/or money to buy a tree, real or fake. During our salad years, I used a green coffee mug holder as our Christmas tree. Instead of eight brown mugs, I hung a few glass ornaments I bought at a thrift store.

When the first child arrived, we decided to have a tree, regardless of cost.

That’s when I first became aware of one of my husband’s few flaws.

We had a brief discussion about what kind of tree to buy. During that talk, he admitted he had always yearned for the aluminum Christmas tree.

Yes, folks, he was a fan of the Tin Monster!

“It looked so pretty with the colors changing all the time,” he sighed. “Simple and stylish. My parents refused to buy one.”

I was appalled. The love of my life wanted one of hideous creations! What other vices is he hiding from me? Will this marriage survive? And why is a colorblind person so fascinated with a tree that changed color? He probably couldn’t even tell when it revolved from red to green.

We decided that real was the way to go for us.

That got harder and harder as the years went by. I was a stay-at-home mom, and Jeff was the sole breadwinner. As such, he worked long hours, often on weekends, to establish himself in his IT career. We couldn’t pick out a tree without him. though. He was the one who had to wrestle the tree into the stand, so he felt he had the right to choose a tree with a straight trunk.

One year, it was after three o’clock on Christmas Eve, and we still had no tree. Once Jeff was home from work, we set out in our K-car station wagon to find an open Christmas tree lot. Most were closed by that time, but we managed to find one about two miles away.

It was a struggle to thaw it in time to put the ornaments on by Christmas morning, but we did it.

I took advantage of the after-Christmas sales to buy our fake tree, a delightful 7.5 ft tall green beauty. I reserved spots at the top of the tree for the few ornaments I had from my childhood: one Hummel figurine and a set of white fabric ornaments adorned with pink fabric roses. Not a pink ball anywhere.

A tree for Jeff

About four years ago, I was at the Royal Oak Farmers’ Market and spotted the infamous color wheel in one of the booths. I walked by it about a half dozen times. The sight of it in its original packaging brought out serious nostalgic feelings. I found a silver tree online for a reasonable price and decided it would be a fun gift for Jeff. Plus, it was time to put away my aversion to the aluminum tree and celebrate its unique place in American culture.

Jeff loved it. He put it up in his office, and it served as his background for many Zoom meetings during Covid Christmases.

This year, he declined to take it out of the box. He’s retired and only he would see it, he said. I offered to put it in my dressing room, but he said it was too much trouble.

I was disappointed. Imagine, all those years hating the Tin Monster, and now I miss seeing it in all its glittery, overdone glory.

Somewhere in Heaven, my mother is laughing.