Tinsel

Tinsel is long, thin strips of shiny metal or plastic hung on the tree to look like icicles. In German it is called Lametta, from an Italian word for a small metal leaf.^1,2 The date most often given for the first tinsel is 1610 in Nuremberg. No museum or archive record of that date has been found. The usual sources for it are a shop’s website and a 2017 newspaper story.^1,4

A Bavarian business archive says glass tree balls were first made in 1848 and that lametta came on the market about 30 years later, around 1878. It says old German lametta was made of heavy tin-foil.^3,4 Cheap aluminum tinsel became possible in the early 1900s. Lead foil tinsel was popular for decades because it did not tarnish, and tinsel was a big fashion in the 1950s and 1960s.^1,5

In 1971 the United States Food and Drug Administration decided lead tinsel was an unneeded risk to children, and makers agreed to stop making or importing it after January 1, 1972. It was an agreement, not a law.^1,5 Today most tinsel is shiny plastic film.^1,4 The last two German lametta makers stopped in 2013 and in December 2015.^4,2