Tinsel Used to Be Made of Real Silver

​For people like me who didn't celebrate Christmas growing up, tinsel is a strange entity. You throw it all over your tree, most of it falls on the floor, and it almost neve​r looks the way you want it to (apparently they also make garlan​ds of the stuff, which makes more sense). But tinsel wasn't always this way—it has a long and complicated history and has been used almost as long as the Christmas tree itself.

Tinsel, sometimes called icicles or lametta, was first used in the early 1600s in Germany. Back then, it was made of thin strips of real silver. These strips supposedly hung better on branches than modern tinsel and looked great reflecting the light of the c​andles that were fastened there. The problem with silver, though, was that it tarnishes quickly, so the tinsel's sheen might not last until Christmas day.

Metal workers and Christmas aficionados started to experiment with other types and combinations of metal that wouldn't tarnish as easily. No one's quite sure when they settled on a combination of tin and lead. This was a good solution because it was cheaper than silver, but was in some ways less ideal because it was heavier and would often break when folded over itself.

Tinsel was popular in this form for centuries, with a slight break in manufacturing during World W​ar I because of disruptions to the manufacturing chain. But it didn't last. Lead, as you ma​y recall, has toxic effec​ts on the human body, from our nervous systems to our gastrointestinal tracts.

These effects had been known for a long time, but the US didn't start enforcing regulations on how much lead could be in commercial products until the 197​0s (lead-based paint was the first to be banned in 1971). In 1972 the US Food and Drug Administration an​nounced that tinsel made of lead could no longer be sold to consumers.

These days, the tinsel you know (and are kind of annoyed with) is made of a synthetic compound called polyvinylchloride, or PVC, with a shiny finish. It's cheap and durable, used in products ranging from thick housi​ng pipes to reco​rds and fake leather clothes. Some less-flexible types of PVC are recyclable, but those handfuls of sparkly plastic that you throw willy-nilly at your tree are not. Much like the Christmas spirit, tinsel ne​ver dies; instead it sits at the bottom of a landfill with the rest of your holiday glee.