Fake Christmas Trees

First Mention: Late-1800s

I wonder where these grow?

Use: Make for a cleaner Christmas Holiday and help save trees.

It’s that time of the year again. That one magical holiday during which we turn a blind eye on personal safety and leave our chimneys and windows open so that good ol’ Santa may slide down and leave us presents based on whether or not he deemed us naughty or nice during his year-long surveillance of you, your children, and friends.

The Christmas Tree has become almost synonymous with Christmas now a days, with vendors going out and cutting down pine and spur trees across the nation as December approaches. We are all suckers for that real and genuine tree: the smell, the feel, almost good enough to make up for the hassle of setting up and cleaning up after the tree. For some, that is too much of a hassle, that is too much of an expense, so there are those who opt out of the genuine tree and purchase fake Christmas trees. The kinds which can be assembled like lego blocks and then put away in a zip-lock bag for next winter. But where did these trees comes from, who came up with the idea of making a fake tree?

The practice of setting up a tree for Christmas in the Americas can be traced back to German settlers in the 1700s who used firs and pines to decorate their homes. I suppose some people were not content with a mere potted plant that they needed an entire tree to be placed in their living room. Later on around the 1840s, Angus Imgard, from Ohio is said to have put candy canes on his home tree, for reasons unrecorded for better or for worse. Regardless of his motives, the seeds of a tradition were growing, and soon many adopted the custom of bringing trees in their homes and decorating them for the holidays.

It seemed as though this practice became so popular that it actually began hurting the native forests. Everyone wanted a tree at the time, and no one cared or considered the consequences. People in Germany for example would cut off the top of fir trees and drag them back home, leaving the trunks to die out in the forests. Such mass demand for trees led to the introduction of the first goose feather tree to be solved in Germany during the 1880s.

In essence for those who have the pleasure/discomfort of sleeping on goose feathers/quills try imagining an entire tree made out of the material. It is hard to consider how many, if any, candy canes these trees held. Finally an American Company, Addis Brush Company famous for their toilet bowl brushes, came up with a brilliant solution of applying their toilet bowl techniques to artificial Christmas trees. The idea was a success, as the toilet bowl trees proved stronger and better built than their goose feather counterparts.

Who would have guest your Fake Christmas Tree was formerly a toilet bowl brush?