The Forever Tree

As I've mentioned before, Christmas Eve used to be the big present-opening day for our family, with Christmas Day reserved for visiting Grandma at her Bucktown cottage and family friends a few blocks away--family friends who owned a full-sized aluminum Christmas tree.

In my memory, the tree is huge--at least ten feet tall, with ornaments the size of 16-inch softballs and hundreds of colorfully wrapped presents for the extended family. I'm sure it wasn't anything quite so Wonkaesque in reality. It was most likely the size of an average Christmas tree--just shinier.

Since then, though, I've maintained an affection for aluminum Christmas trees, just as I maintain affection for Gardenburgers. See, there are plenty of vegetarian products manufacturers that try--try, mind you--to simulate the taste of animal flesh. And they do a fairly good job of it, too--except for products that try to mimic the flavor of beef patties. None of them quite get it right; even the best of them (Boca, probably) taste no better than the dried-out things they used to sling on deflated buns in the Ellen Mitchell Elementary School lunchroom. Gardenburgers--the original, not any of its offshoots or sub-brands--succeeds as a sandwich because it doesn't even try to imitate the flavor of beef. They merely serve as a tasty option. (Not that I'm a vegetarian; I've flirted with it many times in the past, usually because the woman I was interested in at the moment was one and I wanted whatever she liked. Yeah, I know--creepy. No wonder I could never get a date.)

I feel the same way about aluminum trees. They're not trying to be like pine trees, like so many other artificial trees do. They're metallic, man-made alternatives to evergreens and spruces, first manufactured in the late 1950s by Aluminum Specialty Company of Manitowoc, WI, and popular through the end of the next decade.

A couple of years back, it became hip to own a vintage aluminum Christmas tree. Every antique shop that had one in stock, no matter what its relative condition--some of those poor things looked like rats had been nesting in them for decades--propped it in the window with a hefty price tag conveniently turned away from the viewing public; you had to go inside and look around if you wanted to find out how much it cost.

One shop in Wicker Park, Wonderland Multivintage on Milwaukee Avenue (packed wall-to-freakin'-wall with old radios, leopard-print coats, action figures and lunchboxes) had several aluminum trees in a range of sizes, from the full-sized ones I remember to table-top models--all at prices that made my wallet clamp itself to my thigh and steadfastly refuse to come out of my pocket. Red Secretary and I were shopping along Milwaukee Avenue, looking for gifts for her parents (I believe she settled on insect-shaped tealight candle holders--I know I picked up a couple for myself), when we sidled in and looked around. One tree really caught my fancy: a four-footer with full branches and nicely textured "needles." The price, however, was not so nice: $140. Meow. (No diss intended to Wonderland Multivintage--all the aluminum trees in all the antique/vintage shops were pricey that year, no matter what the size, shape or quality.)

RS and I still came out with wicked cool stuff--old-school ornaments for me (mostly angels that matched up well with what I already had), a Burger King stuffed doll for her--but the aluminum trees all stayed behind.

I still visit Wonderland whenever I'm in the neighborhood. Sometimes, I buy. Sometimes, I don't. Usually, I just take a quick tour, realize I don't have the scratch to shop, and head back out into the cold.

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, I was having lunch at Earwax with Kaytee, who was very kindly giving me a very nice frame for my futon so that I could actually buy a--gasp--bed to sleep on. (Now, if I could just get around to shopping for a bedÉ.) Earwax, for those who don't know, is on Milwaukee Avenue--just up the street from Wonderland. And would Kaytee be interested in doing a little shopping before we stopped by her place and hauled out the futon frame? Why, of course she would! So after a few minutes of wandering along Milwaukee Avenue, we arrived at Wonderland, where the windows had been dressed in holiday style--and the aluminum tree of my fancy was still there.

There was no price tag visible--surprise!--but I wasn't sure I really wanted to know. I had already decided that I didn't really want to decorate La Casa del Terror this Christmas; after the way this year has gone, I don't feel especially festive. But as I looked at the aluminum tree in the window, I thought that it wouldn't hurt to ask. If it was still too expensive, it could stay there another year. Or two. Or four. But if it was in my price range....

Kaytee and I went in, where all of the counters at the front of the store were covered with holiday decorations: chrome-plated ornaments dangling from a rotating wire rack; boxed glass tree toppers; reindeer arranged before Santa's waiting sleigh; a whole tabletop with nothing but whole and partial Nativity scenes (some missing a wise man or two, others with angels on high looking down on an empty manger). The counter guy, busily hustling back and forth, putting out "fresh" product and taking away anything not fitting the theme of the season.

"Excuse me," I started, hating to interrupt the man in his work, "Can I ask about something in the front window?" He stopped, nodded without speaking, and followed me out the heavy glass door.

"That one's sixty-five," he said when I pointed to the tree of my fancy.

That, to me, seemed a reasonable price. "Done."

While the counter guy pulled out the original box and dumped what looked like dozens of kraft paper tubes onto the floor, Kaytee noted that there was a color wheel beside the tree, and I aksed for its price as well. "That one's forty-five," he answered in a monotone.

Well...damn. That was almost as much as the tree. The counter guy then gestured to a collection of color wheels on the floor behind him. Some were large, others small. One looked like a salon hairdryer, but bronze in hue. He took this one, walked to the other side of the store, plugged it in and set it on the floor. "I haven't tried these out yet this year," he said, resuming his task of stuffing aluminum-clad branches into kraft paper tubes while the color wheel rumbled to life and proceeded to emit a filling-rattling grinding sound.

Kaytee, who had taken up the cause of stuffing tubes as well, looked at me. "Will that bother Ms. Christopher?"

"Fuck Christopher," I replied. "That sound will bother me."

I decided to forego the color wheel--for this year, anyway--and just take the freshly boxed tree back to La Casa del Terror. Kaytee and her boyfriend gave me a lift back, the disassembled futon frame tied to the roof of his car. After we carried the frame up to the third floor and dropped it on the back porch, I said my goodbyes, went back upstairs with the aluminum Christmas tree and, in a moment of nearly blasphemous giddy excitement, assembled the tree and set it up in the kitchen atop Great Grandma's old wooden table.

That is the first, last and only time I've put up any Christmas decoration before Thanksgiving. But, as I said, I wasn't much in the mood this year, and that goofy, glittery four-foot Evergleam tree helped me feel better about the impending season. Not that I've added much decoration to the display: Peppermint Kitty, a gift from a co-worker years ago, and Angelique, the decades-old little angel found in Grandma's house after the house had burned. Oh...and Santa Cthulhu Plush, who bids you celebrate "Cthulhu-mas" and brings you "tidings of despair" (hee) and Charlie-in-the-Box (from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) atop the TV ("Nobody wants to play with a Charlie-in-the-Box!"--I feel your pain, my brother).

This is very light decoration, compared to past years, true. But walking into the kitchen and seeing that aluminum tree, lighted from below with pine-scented candles, makes me feel good. So do the cards with messages of holiday cheer affixed to the woodwork above and to the side of the tree--cards from Chicago neighborhoods like Ukrainian Village, Andersonville, Lakeview and Chinatown; and from towns near and far, with names like Round Lake Beach and Richardson, St. Joseph and Dayton, Gibsonia and Evanston. There's even one from an old high school buddy who now lives in the town where my aluminum Christmas tree was manufactured so many years ago: Manitowoc, WI.

Put it all together, and it forms a core of holiday spirit. Maybe it's not as strong, warm or glowing as in years past, but it's present--and welcome--nonetheless.

Merry Christmas, one and all.