Back in the late 19th century, many people in Germany were worried about the deforestation

associated with harvesting Christmas trees.

This was before the time when Christmas trees were grown as a commercial crop at a large scale.

So most Christmas trees, and we're talking about a lot of Christmas trees, were just cut down in

the forest.

The effects were real, and the concerns, legitimate.

So what to do?

Well, would you believe that goose feathers were part of the solution?

Or at least one of the solutions.

Someone got the idea to take some goose feathers, dye them green,

attach them to branches made of wire,

and wrap those wire branches around a dowel.

Voila, a feather tree.

They ranged in height from several inches to six feet tall.

They never shed their needles, you could reuse them year to year, and it was good for conservation,

even if it was presumably not so good for geese.

Feather trees are among the first examples of artificial Christmas trees,

and they were quite a hit in Germany. And later, they even made a respectable showing here in

America, where they were available in department stores in the 1920s. The next evolution of

artificial Christmas trees came from an equally surprising source. Toilet brushes. In the 1930s, the company credited with producing the first toilet brush dreamed up yet

another use for all of those animal hair brush bristles that they used for their product.

Dye them green, attach them to wooden dowels to resemble branches, which were then attached

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