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An Underappreciated Classic: Ceramic Christmas Trees

I don’t remember when we first got ours, perhaps when I was in Junior High or High School. What I do remember is that it brought a lot of holiday cheer.

The regular Christmas tree was something of a dark mass with little pops of color until the sun set and the lights were turned on but the ceramic Christmas tree was bright and colorful day and night. It was always a treat when Mom brought it out at Christmastime.

What In The World Is A Ceramic Christmas Tree?

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree. ~Roy L. Smith

The classic ceramic Christmas tree consists of a few simple parts.

There’s a ceramic base with a hole for the light fixture. It’s typically sculpted to look like an ornate tree stand.

There’s the ceramic tree itself which is sculpted to look like a lovely, full evergreen tree. You can buy a finished tree and base or you can go to a craft store and purchase a kit to glaze and fire your own creation. The tree has a variety of holes to insert a collection of colorful bulbs and, of course, a star on top.

The bulbs come in a variety of colors that you can arrange to suit your aesthetic. Some people prefer to mix the bulbs in a riot of colors while others might arrange them in a specific order to create colored tiers or cascades.

Others might prefer a single color over the entire tree such as clear bulbs on a tree that’s been painted to look like a snow-laden fir or possibly pink bulbs on a pastel pink tree. Your imagination is the only limit.

Last but not least, is the star for the top of the tree. The clear or yellowish plastic star will, like the bulbs, illuminate from the lamp you’ve inserted into the base. In daylight, the sheen of the star still makes a cheerful topper. When you turn it on, the star is the crowning glory of the piece.

The Best Of Both Worlds

So, it’s not the 70s anymore and we have a lot of options that weren’t available back in the days when phones were anchored to the wall with curly fry cords. We have nearly instant gratification in online ordering with overnight shipping and we have even more varieties of tree shapes, bulb colors and styles of stars.

If you’re addicted to The Great Pottery Throwdown like I am, you might consider taking on the project of making your very own ceramic Christmas tree from scratch. However, if you have ten thumbs (as I do), you might consider starting with an already fired tree kit and take on the challenge of glazing it yourself.

I can say from personal experience that this is really fun. I made a cookie jar in the shape of a Christmas bell with a ribbon handle and holly decorations. The weird thing with glazes is that they go on a different color than they come out after firing. You just have to take it on faith (and what’s Christmas without a heaping helping of faith) that the color listed on the jar is how it comes out of the kiln. My bell jar came out absolutely beautiful and I remember how much my mother enjoyed receiving it.

Needless to say, there’s a certain joy in buying something that’s already beautifully finished and putting it on display right away, but DIY has a definite charm of its own. Here’s a preview of what that looks like.

Painting a ceramic Christmas tree with Tamara

Another advance that we’ve had since the heyday of ceramic Christmas trees is the advent of LED lighting. LEDs (light-emitting diodes) are brighter than incandescent bulbs while using less electricity.

With shorter days and lots of decorations to plug in, the electric bill (like credit card bills) tends to spike around the holidays. Every little bit helps. If you’re spending less on electricity, that’s more you can spend on ingredients for Christmas cookies. Right?

Another advantage of LEDs is that you can do cool stuff like what this guy does to his ceramic Christmas tree in this short video. Here’s his Instructable writeup so you can follow along.

Jazzing up a Ceramic Christmas Tree

Timeless Wonder

Say a piece of pottery is broken, and it’s fixed, and they use gold in the adhesive and in the sealant. It becomes more precious than it was before it was broken in the first place. ~Rose McIver

While it may seem like a bit of retro kitsch, the fact that the ceramic Christmas tree has started coming back into popular circulation means there’s a collector’s market.

So, not only do they have sentimental value as generational hand-me-downs, but people actually hit yard sales and estate auctions in search of genuinely aged pieces.

What makes these pieces valuable in a collectible sense is the fact that around the turn of the millennium, the trend of two-income households that had begun in the 80s came to an unfortunate head by the end of the 90s.

The shrunken market of hobbyist housewives compounded by the growth in the availability of inexpensive goods from abroad led many ceramics companies to go out of business. With the businesses closed, many of the classic tree molds were lost.

Trade in classic ceramic Christmas trees in online auctions have been known to fetch prices in the low $200s. Authenticating the provenance of aged trees is further complicated by the availability of the original molds from the 60s and 70s. These molds were date-stamped, so a tree poured from an old form will still display the original date.

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What’s old is new again every holiday season. Whether it’s treasured family heirlooms, antique blown glass ornaments or handmade ornaments from your kids or your own childhood, it always adds a bit of classic class to your Christmas decor.