Dreaming of a retro ‘aluminum tree’ holiday? Head to the Johnson County Museum

It was the space age: Sputnik had launched, the United States was trying to catch up, and the country was interested in futuristic decorations. That’s when aluminum Christmas trees took center stage at the holidays.

Sixty years later, a display at the Johnson County Museum’s 1950s all-electric house is bringing back those memories.

“Dreaming of a Retro Christmas” features 20 aluminum trees from the collection of Steve and Mary Pruitt of Overland Park. All are vintage items from the late ’50s and early to mid-’60s, but they showcase a variety of colors, sizes and other features.

Back in 1960, one of these 6-foot Evergleam trees might have set you back about $20 — and that was before the extra accessories like a rotator to slowly spin it around or a cone that showers the tree in fake snow.

If you had the most popular color — silver — you would have wanted to have a color-projecting electric wheel to shine on it, since draping it with lights wasn’t a good idea.

The display includes a list of do’s and don’ts in decorating your aluminum tree, published by aluminum supplier Alcoa.

Growing up, Steve Pruitt always had a natural tree — but his neighbor had an aluminum one that rotated in a picture window.

“I saw it, and I was just mesmerized. My mother thought it was gaudy and awful,” he said.

While he had real trees through his adult years, after his daughter went to college, he decided to embrace his childhood dream tree.

“If we’re going to go fake, we’re going to go really fake,” he said.

He finds them on eBay for the most part, and he’s always on the lookout for rare colors. Out of every 100 aluminum trees, he estimates that 98 are silver. This display features ones with pink, green and blue needles.

“One of the things we’ve never seen is an all-red tree,” said Mary Pruitt.

The fad for aluminum trees lasted less than 10 years. Steve Pruitt said that in 1965, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” spelled the end for the aluminum trees by implying that they were all about commercialization and not about the true holiday spirit.

But that nostalgia lives on.

Visitors from as far as Texas, West Virginia and Nebraska have viewed the exhibit.

“I’m really amazed. A lot of this stuff I remember from when I was a kid,” said William Border of Lincoln, Nebraska., who recalled a bright pink aluminum tree. “My grandma only wanted these fake ones.”

His other grandma was more traditional, sending him out with a handsaw to cut down a real tree.

Mary Pruitt loves to hear these stories.

“When they see the trees, immediately what they begin doing is reminiscing with whomever is with them,” she said. “And that, to me, is the beauty of how these things actually build community — by hearkening back to a time when community didn’t have to be built. It just was.”

Even though the museum typically books its exhibits three years in advance, when Andrew Gustafson, curator of interpretation at the museum, heard about the collection, he knew they had to display it.

“We double-booked ourselves (to make it happen). It was something that seemed so right,” Gustafson said.

Usually the Pruitts display all of their trees in their own home, with four or five in the basement and up to three in each of the other rooms. They fit right in with the 1950s and 1960s period decor that furnishes the couple’s house.

Pruitt said that when people visit their home, the comment he hears most is that it looks like the 1960s-set TV show “Mad Men.”

The aluminum trees display will be up until Jan. 11. Visit jcprd.com/330/Museum for information on prices and hours.

This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Dreaming of a retro ‘aluminum tree’ holiday? Head to the Johnson County Museum."