Artificial Christmas trees, also referred to as aluminum trees, were popular in the 60’s and 70’s. NO, IT WASN’T THE START OF THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS. Some families just wanted to be different. Some wanted to save a tree, others wanted the after Christmas cleanup to be easy. The aluminum tree did have a couple of drawbacks. One was you had to pull EACH branch out of these little paper sleeves and then you had to carefully put them back into the sleeves after Christmas. The other minus was that the aluminum tree couldn’t have lights. It had something to do with getting shocked when you touched the tree. Therefore, in lieu of getting fried (maybe too dramatic), a color-changing light wheel was used. So cool!