Artificial Christmas trees have been used during the festive season for decades. The design of these Christmas icons has seen them develop from basic structures to modern complex designs which reflect the current era. The original artificial Christmas trees were constructed from feathers such as duck and goose, which were dyed green to resemble the pine needles and attached to wooden sticks to look like the branches. The appeal of these original basic feather trees has come back into fashion and is increasingly popular. The current feather trees have a greater variety of colours to choose from, anything from silver to red.

When artificial Christmas trees were initially massed produced companies that made brushes saw that this could be a product they could manufacture so they used similar methods of production as their brushes with the bristles made to look like the needles of the trees. Today the modern bristle equivalent will be made from plastic and come in an assortment of colours and sizes to fit in with any persons taste. However, Each year new varieties and variation on a common theme pop up with artificial Christmas trees,which always raises a smile to see how ingeniously people are at producing new amusing trends in the hope that these will be bring about more merriment.

Metallic Trees

The original wooden artificial Christmas trees were superseded by metallic ones in the later part of the 1950's. These often came in other colours besides green with the assumption that beautiful Christmas decor did not necessarily have to reflect tradition. The original materials used in making these metallic Christmas trees in the 1950's did not take into account, health and safety, and were often made from highly flammable materials. This made it highly hazardous to place lights on them as they had a tendency to burst into flames. To work around this flood lights were used to light up these artificial Christmas trees. Today the modern equivalent of the metal trees are the tinsel trees which are constructed with fire retardant chemicals, which makes using strings of lights on them relatively safe.

During the last ten years artificial Christmas trees often come with strings of lights attached. This leaves the frustration of having to deal with blow bulbs and the chore of having to decorate the tree every Christmas time. The more complex artificial Christmas trees have fibre optics built into them, thus enabling the tree to light up and change colours. These are very well received, due to their convenience and beauty.

One of the most recent developments in artificial Christmas trees as seen an unusual trend appear for the upside down Christmas tree. They can either be hung from the ceiling or placed in a stand on the floor. One of the great advantages of these artificial Christmas trees is that the decorations can be kept away from the prying fingers of small children, because they can be hung at a greater height The other benefit is the amount of room underneath these trees allows more room for the presents, which in turn creates a more interesting focus for your living room.

So it can be seen that artificial Christmas trees have many opportunities and advantages to the traditional trees with the diversity of colours and shapes. The durability enables it to be reused for many years to come and you don't have the bother of having to pick up the pine needles when Christmas is over. This explains some of the reasons why artificial Christmas trees are increasingly popular in homes who do not want to be bothered with the hassle of the traditional trees.