Now that the calendar has turned to 2013 (we survived the Mayan Apocalypse, huzzah!), it’s time to take down those holiday decorations and look forward to the New Year. Many of us will bring the old pine tree out for recycling pickup while others will pack up realistic-looking fake trees.

Others? They may take down a sparkly bit of aluminum, and no, we’re not talking about a Festivus pole. The old aluminum trees – complete with rotating color wheel – are making a bit of a comeback. In some cases, like with Teresa Dominie, it’s a holiday tradition. From The Western Star:

To Dominie the tree, which has been in her family since 1966, represents tradition.

“I’m all about tradition,” she said. “If you look at my regular tree it doesn’t have ribbons and bows, it’s got ornaments from the places we’ve travelled. It’s got ornaments from my mother’s tree and my grandmother’s tree, my husband’s parents’ tree and his grandparent’s tree.

“It’s all about keeping the family in the holiday and in Christmas.”

In other cases, the aluminum tree has become more of a hipster fad. Everything old is new again, after all, and you can’t put a price on kitsch or irony. Well, actually, you can. From J. A. Bartlett’s blog circa 2010:

You can buy aluminum Christmas trees again these days. They’ve migrated over the last several years from hipster icon to something easily found in big-box stores, and some of them can be quite striking.

So, just how much is an aluminum Christmas tree these days? According to Amazon, a three-foot tree retails for about $34 while tall (seven feet) aluminum Christmas trees can fetch up to $225.

For all the great industry strides aluminum has made in manufacturing over the past year, who would have thought that a 60s throwback would be driving the price up?