Vintage Christmas chic or just plain gaudy?

It seems that every Thanksgiving or Christmas this subject comes up when we're sitting around after dinner sharing laughs about the past. We laugh, we cringe and we wince. We wonder what the hell we were thinking back then.

This particular subject comes up almost every time: The aluminum Christmas tree with the color wheel. We had one for several years. This was in the late 60s until about 1971, maybe 1972. Believe it or not, it was not unusual to have one of those back then. At the time they were still considered an acceptable alternative to a real tree to some people. I asked my Mom why she did that and she said it was because it was just new and different, sort of a novelty at the time. It was also easy enough for a child to set up. So easy that my mom almost never had to set it up because me and my sister insisted on doing it ourselves. There were three steps: (1) Stand the pole up (2) Stab the gigantic pipe cleaner looking things into the pre-drilled holes in the wooden dowel and (3) Plug in the color wheel behind the "tree". My Mom would later decorate it with shiny balls, sometimes of varying colors as seemed to be the custom then. It was far beyond tacky. But what did we know? It was 1970 and we lived in Corpus Christi (Padre Island).

I remembered this when I got home and searched the topic. It seems that this butt-ugly Christmas tree has officially achieved retro-cool status. They are for sale all over the net. The color wheels too. If you aren't old enough to remember this or haven't picked your own up from the vintage store yet, this is what I'm talking about: