Season's Gleamings: The Art of the Aluminum Christmas Tree

My parents bought an aluminum tree when my sister and I were young, 1959, for safety reasons. I still have the tree and love it because it reminds me of my early Christmases. This collection of photographs is delightful for us aluminum tree lovers to not only see the different kinds created other than our own but also to see various decorating and lighting ideas. Safety hint, change the old hot bulb in the color wheel to a new energy efficient and cooler bulb.

I only wish they put more pictures of the trees. I remember much more different colors than what is in the book. I had a turquoise aluminum tree, with lime green bulbs, purple bulbs, silver bulbs, and turquoise. It was so pretty. I would have liked to see more color, and more trees.

If you are a child of the early 60s like me, or just someone who appreciates great photography, then you will love this sweetly nostalgic look at aluminum Christmas trees. Season's Gleamings is full of beautiful color photos showing the amazing variety of trees available at the time: small silver tabletop models, giant gold seven-footers, trees festooned with period ornaments, and others shimmering in the glow of rotating color wheels. I loved flipping through the pages of this book and being reminded of the Christmases of my childhood. I highly recommend it as a gift for family and friends, or as a holiday coffee table book for your own home. Wonderful!

Season's Gleamings begs you to look deeper than the tinsel, into the heart of small town America laid waste by the broken promises of wartime prosperity. It would be a shame if this book were relegated merely to the kitsch Christmas section of bookstores all over America. This is an ode to small town America and the secrets and memories that it holds as seen through the eyes of the documentary photographers J. Shimon and J. Lindemann, chroniclers of the ashes of the American dream. Not a nostalgic tribute to the Sears or Montgomery-Ward Christmas catalog but an adult tale that begs the reader to participate. For example, "Foot Massage Christmas", (page 23), shows a pair of spiked heels and a 1950s style vibrator upstaging a "seven foot, one-hundred branch, Star Brand Company Sparkler Pom-Pom Aluminum Christmas tree with a dozen shiny bright ornaments"-ho-ho-ho! "Insomnia" (page 59) depicts the seamy underside of a Normal Rockwell Christmas. Finally, "Nursing Home Christmas" on the cover of the book, reminds the reader of the hopes that the aluminum industry gave to small town Manitowoc, Wisconsin and the nothing they yielded. Perhaps this book, with its scathing insights crafted by two of Manitowoc's own children, is one of the best vestiges of the proud wartime industry of Manitowoc and of small towns all over America. These artists have accomplished something both mystical and haunting by documenting a past that dies a little bit every day.

Possibly the first book on the subject, this seasonal consumer-oriented photo art book resurrects and celebrates the ready-made art of the aluminum Christmas tree. Mass-produced to satisfy consumer tastes beginning about 1959, these tinselly beauties became passé in the mid-60's, but were later rescued from thrift store and garage sale by retro hipsters like Shimon & Lindemann. Better known for hand-crafted photographic studies using antiquarian techniques, Shimon & Lindemann teamed up with innovative Melcher Media for this exacting re-evaluation. The result is a compact project whose ostentatious packaging might have degraded the unremitting Pictorialist control the artists bring to their main body of work. Fortunately, Shimon and Lindemann respond to the motif of manufactured beauty with a supple ordering of Duchampian wit, pop art ironies and straight-up pictorial portraiture. Among my faves: In "Christmas Alone" religious and secular ironies are layered by dual focal points of aluminum treetop angel and a humble repast of instant coffee and popcorn; authentic period objects re-enforce the theme of the legacy of aluminum. "Viewing 1961 in 1959" in 2004, as the title clumsily suggests, leans heavily on anachronistic concept yet achieves an attractive combo of color and composition with various objects, including a working 1958 Philco Predicata Penthouse television. "P.P.'s family tree.." is planar, analytical. Twenty-five blue Shiny Brite ornaments and, seemingly, behind them, a scraggly Craft House Fairyland Pink Tree weightlessly occupy an off-white emptiness of space. Seasons Gleamings contextualizes the aluminum Christmas tree craze with two serviceable essays, one a sort of memoir by the artists and a second, by Brooklyn-based writer, Tom Vanderbilt. Seasons Gleaming would make an excellent gift or coffee table trapping for the Christmas season. Those who are unfamiliar with or uninterested in art and aluminum Christmas trees may not fully appreciate it, but rich packaging, like endpapers containing technical drawings from original patents, and a cover with the title spelled out in enormous silver reflective ink font will catch the eye of even your boorish and ancient Yuletide guests.