- Well, welcome again to the Community Lecture Series. Tonight's speaker is Dr. Neil Prendergast, and his topic is a timely one: The Roots of the Real Christmas Tree. And Neil's in my history department. He's an assistant professor there. He's been with us since 2010. Is that right, Neil? He has a PhD from the University of Arizona. He has a master's degree in history from Miami University in Miami, Ohio.  He's working currently on a book project which has something to do with this topic: American Holidays, American Nature. And he's currently in progress working on that book manuscript. Neil is a recipient of our Excellence in Teaching Award at the university. 

He is also the co-coordinator of the Environmental Studies minor, and he teaches courses in U.S. history since 1877, U.S. environmental history, United States environmental politics since 1900, and food and the environment, among others. So there's a common theme that you can see there to his interests.  Neil is on the History Committee of the Wisconsin State Historic Preservation Review Board. He's very active in that regard. And he's also a member of some professional organizations, including the American Historical Association, the American Society for Environmental History, the Network in Canadian History and Environment, and the American Studies Association. A little tidbit about Neil. When he moved here, he moved from Arizona, as I said, and he immediately got an interest in birding, because when he was first here he saw both a turkey and a red-tailed hawk on the same limb of a tree. And we said welcome to Wisconsin. Either it's a dumb turkey or a dumb hawk, one or the other. So I want to welcome Neil Prendergast, The Roots of the Real Christmas Tree. 

Neil. (audience applauds) - Thanks so much for being here. I want to thank Chris Cirmo for the introduction and the College of Letters and Science for hosting this event. And I'd also like to thank the Portage County Public Library for doing its part in hosting the event as well. My talk tonight is called The Roots of the Real Christmas Tree, and it really comes from my interest in the role of nature in modern American life. As an environmental historian, that's my particular field of study, I'm interested in all of the ways in which nature has mattered to Americans in the past. And I think the ones that motivate my interest the most are the ones that are close to home. Some people are interested in distant landscapes, but the materiality of our every day world is really fascinating to me. And so I took up an interest in the place of nature and holidays. And who can avoid, if they're interested in that, the Christmas tree? And, of course, one of the big ways of looking at the Christmas tree is through authenticity. 

So I'm going to talk a little bit today about how we've come to think about the Christmas tree as either real or perhaps fake, what the historical roots of that particular way of thinking are. So, thank you for coming out tonight. I also wanted to point out before I get too much into things that I've provided a handout. And you guys might see this on the chairs. Maybe you don't have one, but the person next to you should. There are several of them out there. These are simply the quotes that I'll be drawing from throughout the lecture. I have some of them excerpted on the PowerPoint, but sometimes I feel it's nice to have the real deal in your own hands right there in front of you. So that's there for you to look at. So the roots of the real Christmas tree, I think it's really impossible to start talking about the real Christmas tree without first beginning with what could be regarded as the elephant in the room: A Charlie Brown Christmas. 

And I'm imagining, I'm hoping actually, that all of you have seen this many, many times, have come to love it, and view this in a good light. (laughs) Is that the case? Are you guys all viewers of this? You've seen it? Wonderful, okay. So you might recall this scene. I think this is really the most important one for me. This is when Charlie Brown is trying to sell the idea of this spindly little three-limbed evergreen to Linus. And Linus, you might recall, is a little suspect. They've been charged, actually, with getting a fancy Christmas tree, and Charlie Brown has the independence of making a decision on his own because, well, Lucy's not around (laughs). And Lucy is the one who wanted the purple, shiny, aluminum tree. And as you guys probably all recall, Charlie Brown does in fact select the spindly version. He views it as more authentic, and it's sort of a symbol of the need to get away from commercialism at Christmastime. And I would argue that this piece of media here is probably the most influential in how Americans think about Christmas trees even today. 

There's nothing else, I think, that's been viewed as much that has attempted to cast some meaning on what the Christmas tree is. And the meaning here is authenticity. This is the real thing. It's anti-commercial.  My curiosity is how did we get there? And I think it's probably common sense to say, well, you're gonna have a real version if you've got a plastic one, too.  Certainly that comparison means that we're going to create different meanings for the both of them. But I think that, actually, the concern about authenticity and the way we produce Christmas trees in this country actually have far deeper roots than Christmas 1965 when A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired. So what I want to do today, actually, is address this question that we face every single season in a historical way. And you guys, I'm certain, have probably already seen news stories like this one already where the media is doing some sort of lifestyle piece where they say, well, let's give the viewers something about Christmas trees this year. Maybe we'll do some sort of pass at an environmental analysis of which one is better. 

It's a very common news story. I'm sure that you've seen something like this before. Looking at this now, I'm a little jealous that it was 79 degrees in Houston (audience laughs) when I took this screenshot. But I think we're not doing so bad, either, this year. So this is a story that kind of bugs me, actually, because we do it every single year, and I don't think we ever really get a good answer as to which one is better for the environment. And some people will argue passionately on one side for the plastic tree, and some people will argue passionately on the side of the real tree. I'm not really interested in trying to convince anybody in this room of which one is the better environmental choice. What I'm interested in doing is having us see why that's a choice at all. And so that's, to me, the most interesting thing about Christmas trees. Why do we have the choice that we have? So tonight I want to begin with some Christmas tree history. 

So we're gonna go way back to the 1800s. You guys, after all, gave the microphone to an historian, so we're going to the 1800s.  We have to really begin in the 1820s, 1830s. And that's when Christmas really becomes the domestic holiday that we can recognize today in the United States. Previous to the early 19th century, the people who lived in what would become the United States did not commonly celebrate Christmas very much. In New England, for example, the Puritans did not think it was a worthwhile holiday to pursue. In fact, they were very much against it. They weren't a fan of really too many holidays, in fact. And so there wasn't really a common practice of Christmas. And when Americans did celebrate Christmas, it was usually actually newer immigrants from Europe who celebrated it in a way that the Puritans didn't quite like, which was to get really, really drunk, break into each other's homes, sing, dance, and do all sorts of not very Puritan things. 

(audience laughs) So the Puritans didn't really like it. Well, this continues into the 1820s, 1830s, 1840s. And there's a rising middle class in those years. And they're kind of like the Puritans. They don't like the misrule of the way that newer immigrants are celebrating Christmas. They don't like the drunkenness, but they kind of want to celebrate Christmas. And so they come up with a different version of a holiday. And their version of a holiday is to make it a domestic holiday that's really focused on children. And for that, they used the Christmas tree. And so the Christmas tree becomes a significant part of the American version of Christmas as Americans decide to make the holiday about kids and about being at home during the holiday. 

Here you can see the children sort of very excited about the gifts that are underneath the Christmas tree. And, in fact, this would have been a typical sort of Christmas tree for much of the 19th century. It's a tabletop Christmas tree, and it's one that might have been the top part of a tree cut off or just a very immature tree. But, still, not too many Americans, even in the mid-19th century, really celebrated Christmas. It was not at anywhere near the scale that we would experience it today. By the time we get to the late 19th century, though, things sort of change.  A lot of Americans start to celebrate Christmas, and they're doing it in the domestic way that we know how. And this creates a deep concern for America's conservationists. They think that cutting down trees, even if it's just the top, is a bad idea.  This photograph is from the 1890s. 

And you can see in the photograph, to the bottom left-hand corner are the Christmas trees starting to be piled up. The men are trying to haul away the Christmas trees. It's still somewhat a localized industry, actually, in the 1890s. You can see the sort of equipment they have. This is not an industrialized harvesting of trees by any means quite yet. Still, this is going on in most New England states, most middle Atlantic states, and most Midwestern states. And people are starting to be a little bit concerned about the impact this was having on America's forests. And the 1890s was a time when conservation was very important to Americans. This is when the conversation about the Forest Service begins. And, ultimately, the Forest Service gets created in the first decade of the 20th century. 

This is also the origins of Arbor Day. You guys probably are familiar with Arbor Day, planting a tree on Arbor Day. And, in fact, it's J. Sterling Morton who was the founder of Arbor Day who described this sort of scene as a wanton waste. And that's the first quote on the handout. So, if you turn to your handout, this is what he has to say. "The absurdity "of celebrating the birth of the Savior of the world "by wanton waste and extravagance "which jeopardizes the welfare "of millions of human beings yet unborn..." He thought there would be a timber problem in the future. "Is obvious to every thinking man." So there was this backlash against Christmas trees. And this is not at all where the conversation is today in the 21st century. So the 1890s and the early 1900s was a very different conversation about Christmas trees.  Now, some people retorted, well, the Christmas trees that are being cut down were not going to be the large trees that would supply the nation with future timber. 

These were small trees of species that really had very little timber value.  The Boston Herald, for example, said, "Until 10 years ago, the balsam fir," which was the very most popular Christmas tree species at the turn of the century, "was considered the most worthless three that ever grew. "Its wood was valueless for timber and made poor fuel. "The fir was outside the pale of human utility."  So, there was two sides to the debate. Some people, like Morton, were saying this was a waste, and others were saying, no, we can afford it. Who cares about balsam fir anyway (laughs)? So this debate went on for quite some time, and it really created some confusion around the issue of Christmas trees so that not very many Americans actually had Christmas trees in their house. Around 1900, there were about four million Christmas trees harvested, is the best estimate we have. And the country's population in 1900 was about 75 million. So not every household had one. Not even, probably, really half the households had them. 

Today, we're at a much higher percentage.  Now the solution for some people was to create a judicious process. And this is the words of Colman's Rural World, which was a popular conservation agricultural magazine of the turn of the century. And what they wanted was the Forest Service to create some sort of regulation. The 1890s, the early 1900s, was the era of the Progressives, commonly called the Progressive Era, and this was the moment in American history where it seemed like about just everybody wanted to create a bunch of rules for everybody else to live by. We need processes and regulations. That was sort of the mood of the day. And so Colman's Rural World said, "Only when Christmas trees are removed "by a judicious process of selection "would it be the fitting end of a useful life." Again, this is a conversation that is not at all like the one that we have today about real versus fake.  So, what to do? Well, some people realized that this was not just a conservation problem. That this problem was also one about community life in America. 

 Some people said, well, we're concerned that we're cutting down all these trees. We're maybe not so sure if it's a problem or not. There seems to be some confusion on the issue. But what we realize is that we could help solve the problem if not every single household, or as many as currently did, needed to have a Christmas tree. And, in fact, that would not only lessen the demand on these trees, these poor balsam firs and other species, but maybe we could come up with a solution that would actually bring everybody together at Christmastime. Maybe we could have a public Christmas tree. And if you guys, you know, have been outside today, and I trust that you've been on this street today and looked down Main Street, you've seen that we have a public Christmas tree. What I'm talking about right here is the origin of the tree that you see outside, actually. The intellectual origins, you could say.  The living community Christmas tree idea was a way to create one Christmas tree in every town to be planted, actually, in the town square, perhaps outside a courthouse or some other public meeting ground. 

And the notion was that people could celebrate Christmas in this public space. They wouldn't need to celebrate Christmas in their private homes in a domestic fashion. Christmas could be a public holiday, much like the Fourth of July or other similar public holidays. Progressives really liked this idea. People like Jacob Riis, who you might recall from a high school history class perhaps. He was a famous progressive concerned about community life in America. He said this is exactly what our country needs. What we need is a way to come together. This was also the moment where immigration to the United States was increasing rapidly. And so some progressives wanted a way for people to feel like they were all in it together, as if there was a common American culture. 

And they were trying to actually create that through this idea of a living community Christmas tree. So it was both a conservation idea and an idea about community life. Again, very different than how we consider a Christmas tree today and the questions that we ask about a Christmas tree today.  Now, part of the concern was what happened to immigrants as they became American. And some people thought one of the most--  One of the worst parts, actually, about coming to America actually people thought there were bad parts to it, (audience laughs) was that individuals maybe would retain a little bit of their family life. Maybe they would come to the United States with a sibling or a parent or a child, and so they would retain some of the, sort of the closest bonds they had with family members. But what they would lose was the village life that they had relied upon in Europe. And so the Charity Organization Society, which was a society in New York that was sort of an umbrella organization for other charities, really thought through the loss that immigrants had. That they weren't necessarily introduced to a similar community when they came to the United States. So, again, if you look at your handout, this is the long one. 

"The living community Christmas tree would transform "what the Charity Organization Society called "the debris of Europe's social tradition "into a far richer and deeper kind "of American community life." It argued that "when the village community is transplanted "man by man or family by family "and tossed into the American city, "there is more social tradition suddenly wasted "than 100 years of orderly transformation could effect." So, again, the concern here is about community life. Here, this is an image from New York City outside one of the typical missions that dotted sort of Progressive Era cities. These are people lining up for some food on Christmas day outside a charity organization.  Now, this movement for a living community Christmas tree really got underway first in New York City. And so in Madison Square, the first one was created in 1913. And I just absolutely love this image because it shows the construction of the tree. So it shows that it's something in the making. You can see the scaffolding there. It's not a planted tree. It was one that was cut and brought. 

But nonetheless, the proponents and the organizers of this tree thought they were still doing something conservation minded because if people decided to have their holiday in Madison Square, they wouldn't need to purchase a cut tree for their own private home. So, again, there's two concerns paired together.  And they connected it, the supporters, to the idea of democracy. I don't think it's a big jump to talk about community life and then to talk about democracy. And so we can look at some of the ways in which supporters made that connection. Norman Radder, I have a quote from him. He was a Progressive Era intellectual who really thought a lot about media. And what he had to offer was: "To live democracy, every person in a neighborhood "must learn about common problems, "must discuss them with his neighbors, "and must cooperate in solving them." And he argued to do that, people actually needed to be outside and see each other. They couldn't all just be in their private homes. I almost said on their smartphones (laughs). 

(audience laughs) I didn't say that. That wouldn't be historical. I think I know how he would view those, though. But we needed common places to actually interact with one another. And so he was in support. He was one of the popularizes of a living community Christmas tree. In the 19-teens and the 1920s, this idea took off. Some communities decided to have one that was planted. Other communities tried that and had a hard time getting the tree actually transplanted in a healthy way. There's a practical issue there, of course. 

But nonetheless, they had a public tree, a community tree, in the 19-teens and 1920s. So it was a real movement, a successful movement.  Well, what's happened to the living community Christmas tree, and why don't we speak about Christmas trees with the same sort of concern that turn of century Americans had? They were so concerned about community life. They were so concerned about conservation. And those really were on their lips when they were talking about a Christmas tree. Today we don't think about that. We think about authenticity. We think about which one is better for nature, but we want to think that through from ourselves as individuals, as consumers. That's not how they frame the question over 100 years ago. So, what's happened here? Well, what's happened is that it was a great idea, but people didn't really follow through with it in the way that the initial organizers really desired. 

And so I want to talk about some of the ways in which the living community Christmas tree idea was sort of steered away from even as it expanded.  The first thing, I think, to consider is this idea of the corporate soul. I borrowed this term from an historian whose work I really admire, Roland Marchand.  He studied, actually, the public relations history of American corporations. And he's come up with this term the corporate soul. And he's not arguing that corporations have a soul. He argues that corporations want you to think that they have a soul.  They don't. They're not people.  Well, you can sort of see this type of PR move, where the corporation wants to convince maybe residents in the towns that it operates within or maybe its consumers that it's actually a part of the community. 

That it thinks and feels with the community. When you look at some of the companies that tried to attach their names to different community Christmas trees. So we've got the Dayton Power & Light Company of Ohio, Dayton, Ohio, who recommended planting one because it was the modern plan of conservation that, of course, the Dayton Power & Light Company was so much behind. They were simply trying to attach their own name to something that they saw as being popular. It's almost as if the Dayton Power & Light Company, "liked" the Christmas tree on Facebook (laughs). That's the sort of same sort of thing that they were doing here.  The Bell Telephone Company. A lot of these were utility companies, actually, that would try to sponsor a community Christmas tree because sometimes they could offer electricity to light the trees, that kind of thing. The Bell Telephone Company said, "There have been few, if any, movements that had, "as their objective, nothing more tangible "than the development of community social feeling, "the establishing of a social tradition," which sounds kind of odd when it's the Bell Company telling you that and not a city or a community telling you that.  This is one of my favorites. 

This is the Christmas tree that was put atop of McCormick Works in Chicago.  This was a similar move. The advertising here of the company, the goodwill the company was trying to generate was toward its own employees. Those of you who have taken my history classes know that McCormick is, of course, famous for being the company that was at the center of the Haymarket affair, which was a major labor uprising of the late 19th century. In the early 20th century, McCormick is trying all sorts of ways to make itself look, well, like it has a corporate soul. One of those ways is to have a Christmas tree. I have a quote here from McCormick, actually, on the back. Superintendent F.H. Harrison of McCormick Works and his organization had their own Christmas tree. This is on the back, actually, of this as a postcard. 

"It was large enough to be visible to the employees..." There's the crucial line. "For a considerable distance and all directions "as they came to and went from their work." We're nice people. Trust us. "It was lighted and decorated " in attractive style and exemplified the..." This is really my favorite part. "The get-together spirit (chuckles) "that is so characteristic of McCormick." So, Christmas trees here are not neutral. They're being deployed for reasons that are particular to these corporations.  Another one of my favorite ones, actually, is the Colorado Fuel and Iron Works. The Colorado Fuel and Iron Works is not a name that most people would know, but you might know the name Rockefeller. Rockefeller owned the Colorado Fuel and Iron Works. It was part of his corporate empire. 

And you might have heard of the Ludlow Massacre in Ludlow, Colorado, in the early 20th century when Rockefeller got the Colorado National Guard to shoot and kill striking workers. Well, by the time you get into the 1920s, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Works is advertising to its employees the Christmas festivities that it's putting on for its workers. So, what I'm pointing out here is that these corporations are using the Christmas tree as a way to try to generate some good feeling towards themselves. And I'm not so certain that everybody bought it. I think what it did is it watered down the idea of a community Christmas tree. It let people think, well, this is really a product of a corporation. This is a product of somebody else. I'm not the one who's helping put it together. I'm not engaging in the process of decorating it. I'm not part of the creative work here. 

This is just something that somebody says they're doing for me. And so it's a way to kind of push away, actually, I think, what real community activity would look like.  And, finally, the one that everybody knows, the Rockefeller one. Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, which began in the late 1930s. The name Rockefeller running through a lot of this. And this actually has an interesting history. It was initially put up by workers when they were constructing the plaza, and then it was decided to make it sort of a more of a centerpiece and to get a very large tree beyond the scale of the one the workers had chosen.  Another thing that happened that really, I think, made it difficult for the community Christmas tree to really hold together Americans in a way that it really would be the one tree that they would celebrate Christmas at and that they wouldn't want to go home and just celebrate there privately is ethnic tension in the early 20th century. The quote I have here is from a planning journal called American City. If anybody is interested, actually, in urban history, on the way cities are laid out, to just thumb through old issues of American City is really interesting. 

This is where a lot of the ideas for the way that turn of the century cities were laid were sort of discussed. You could see a lot of the characteristics of a town like Stevens Point, actually. The American City was actually very positive, and it was trying to say there's a big promise here. So when it offered this, that the ideal municipal tree should draw all classes, all kinds of citizens, rich or poor, native or foreign born, it was pointing towards an ideal it hoped would be fulfilled by the Christmas tree. It should symbolize to them and awaken them to the spirit of brotherhood while they voice together with the message of peace and goodwill, renewed loyalty to their common city, state, and country. And you can see what American City is trying to do here is trying to sort of divert attention away from any kind of religious differences also.  Of course, Catholics and Protestants not always being best of friends in the early 20th century. But what happened was not what American City wanted.  More common were comments like this. One Syracuse, New York, resident who really was kind of a little bit upset at what she called the "comic crudity" of "noisier, grosser" immigrants who showed up at the community Christmas tree. 

She had wanted a sort of a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant affair and not an actual reflection of Syracuse, New York.  So people started to stay away because they didn't really like to be with each other. Another thing that happened, we move into the mid-20th century, is the suburban lifestyle. People started moving to the suburbs, as I'm certain you all are aware, really in significant numbers following the Second World War. I'm certain some people are familiar with the history of Levittowns  and the other early suburban developments. These early suburban developments really did not put a large value on public space. And they replaced things like Main Streets and town squares with shopping malls. This is an image, actually, from 1950 of Seattle's Northgate shopping mall, which was one of the first enclosed shopping malls in the United States. And what it decided to do was put a community Christmas tree up. This is actually two different trees somehow put together. 

Some sort of arboreal Frankenstein. (audience laughs) You could see it from a long ways away. It was a great idea. It got Northgate shopping mall in the pages of Life magazine. Was it public space? No, of course not.  Suburban living really did have a focus on private space. And rather than try to make that argument myself, I just want to turn to somebody who's a professional in thinking about suburban history. And so, Liz Cohen, who's a social historian who a lot of historians admire, really has kind of, I think, summed it up best. So I think we can just trust Dr. Cohen here, who says, "The privatization of public space "in suburban shopping centers had ominous implications "for the preservation of democratic freedom." She's talking a lot about the limitations on free speech that come when one tries to voice themselves in private space compared to public space. Shopping malls would qualify as private space. 

So they're not real expressions of community. They're really sort of carefully curated corporate spaces.  And, of course, suburban living comes with those standalone homes, right? And Americans in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s who could afford one and who didn't have a racial barrier to getting one were very interested in filling up those standalone homes with all of the things that signaled their own personal progress and what they regarded to be the progress of the country. At Christmastime they were adamant about having a Christmas tree in their own home, as this suburban Washington, D.C., image shows. And, of course, the presents that go underneath. They're doing pretty well, I'd say. So this is really what's going on. And what we need to kind of keep in view, I would say, is where that tree on the left came from. That it came from a place on the right. Well, maybe not exactly, but that type of place. 

This is a Christmas tree farm. And so what I've done so far is talk about the ways in which Americans have purchased Christmas trees or wanted to have a community one, but I've now steered away for a little while from how we've produced Christmas trees, and how they've been grown and harvested. That's actually an important part of the story that I want to take quite a bit of time to discuss.  A Christmas tree for every home.  Christmas tree farms really ramp up in the 1950s and the 1960s. In many ways, they're products of initiatives by the part of the US Department of Agriculture trying to find ways of make rural Americans or to allow rural Americans to make a living. Lots of farmers were shifting from sort of crops that weren't quite making it in their region, trying to find something else to do. The USDA said Christmas trees would be great. Particularly they were telling this to farmers in Michigan, North Carolina, and some of the states that have really become the major producers of Christmas trees. Wisconsin would be among them. 

 And out of this effort emerged an organization initially called the National Christmas Tree Growers Association, but then, quickly thereafter its founding in 1955, shortened its name to the National Christmas Tree Association. They were thinking about how I could fit their name on the slide. (Neil and audience laugh) And they're a traditional organization. They aren't the bad guys or anything like that. Just a typical agricultural organization that seeks to serve the interests of its constituent farmers in terms of pooling money for marketing programs, lobbying for laws that are friendly to its endeavor, and that kind of typical thing.  Well, they really did a great job, actually. And, in the 1950s, Christmas tree production gets to about 25 million, and it's headed towards 30 million. And it's really ramping up. More and more farmers are getting into it. In fact, a lot of the farmers argue that too many farmers were getting into the tree farm business. 

 That was an issue for them. They were also learning about pests for the first time, how to apply herbicides for the first time, that kind of thing. And they were also, just as they were becoming successful in the 1960s, encountering the threat of the synthetic tree.  The reason being is that vinyl becomes an affordable commodity in the mid-century, and clever people figure out how to turn vinyl into a Christmas tree. And so the graph up here I have shows this competition and how it really increases in the 1960s. The total market share is the column on the left there. And, in 1950, you can see synthetic trees really are almost nil. The darker line there is the grown trees. I've called them grown trees, trying to get away from the metaphors of real and fake for a moment. But that dark green bar decreases as you go to 1955 just a hair. 

1960, wow, the farmers are paying attention. And by 1965, they really are worried. And so what to do? Well, the thing to do is you market your tree. You've got an organization that can do it, so you do it. And here's what you come up with. Well, you don't come up with that exactly, but you borrow from them. I should say to be totally fair here, Charlie Brown did a great thing for the National Christmas Tree Association, (audience laughs) but not enough. I would argue that he killed the aluminum tree, but there should have been some dig in that cartoon at the vinyl tree. (laughs)  So this is what the National Christmas Tree Association does. It markets the idea of the real tree. 

This is a tag ironically printed on vinyl (audience laughs) that they wanted to put on Christmas trees to remind them, remind consumers that what you're getting is something real here. In an age of plastic, that was a marketable idea.  Later, in the 1980s, they create this, what they call the real tree campaign, which included coloring books. This is the cover of a coloring book: Real Trees 4 Kids. My son, to this very day, did that (laughs). I came home today, and he had that done. A green Christmas tree. It wasn't on a National Christmas Tree Association coloring book, but it's close. The other thing they did is they hired Willard Scott. Willard Scott, the television personality from the Today show, to say things on TV like you don't eat a plastic turkey at Thanksgiving, so you shouldn't have a plastic tree at Christmas. 

It was this argument about authenticity that he was really relying upon.  I want to be clear, though, that real does not necessarily mean automatically environmentally better. After some analysis, it might be that a real Christmas tree is environmentally better. I'm not suggesting that that's impossible. But it doesn't automatically mean that it's better just because it's a grown tree. And as a way to kind of point this out, I want to look at the reaction that the American Christmas Tree Association had to Silent Spring. I see some younger faces in the crowd, people who need to take my environmental history classes. (audience laughs) Where you can learn about Silent Spring. Silent Spring was a book published in the early 1960s that really outlined the dangers of synthetic chemicals, especially DDT.  It was a big hit. 

Very controversial.  Some people liked it. Some people, like Ed Udine from Pennsylvania State University, who lended his work to the American Christmas Tree Growers Journal, did not like Silent Spring. His reaction to it was, "In this book, Miss Carson..." Rachel Carson was the author, "makes an emotional and somewhat inaccurate outburst "on the use of pesticides. "She avidly accepted as facts, " statements of questionable authorities, "hearsay," and, God forbid, "housewives." (audience laughs) This was the sort of reaction that the Christmas tree industry had to any sort of criticism that it was not an environmentally friendly industry. It is true that they were spraying DDT. They were also spraying other herbicides that we now know have major environmental health consequences. So just because it was real does not necessarily automatically mean that somehow it was better.  It might have just had different environmental issues. Today, maybe there are tree growers, and maybe there's a tree grower in the audience. 

I don't know. It's possible to be better, but I'm not saying it automatically is. And then, finally, the Christmas tree industry wises up, and they realize, well, what we need to do is actually embrace some green consumerism here, and they, in North Carolina, the state chapter of the national association would put up these signs: This is a Christmas tree farm: Feel free to breathe deeply. Because, of course, trees produce oxygen, right? And so they start making environmental claims about the real tree. And those environmental claims are still with us today. This is from about 1980. So it's still some time ago. But as we get into the present, similar claims are being made.  Which leads us to this dilemma we have every holiday season. Real or fake, which one is better? I hope I've confused the issue for you a little bit. 

And I hope that you see that some of the reasons we have this debate are because of this shift in mid-century towards private consumption. That without private consumption we wouldn't be thinking at all about which one we should purchase. Maybe we would just be having more of a public one, if we were to have one at all. So, with that, I want to end with this last slide. That one of the earliest ideas with Christmas trees was about democracy. And so I just kind of want to end by challenging everybody to think about how that's present in our lives when we're buying things, if it is at all. I think that's a really worthwhile thing for us to think about any time of the year. Thank you. (audience applauds)   - Well, welcome again to the Community Lecture Series.