Since my last post resulted in several comments about O'Neil's talking Christmas tree, I thought I would post this. It's a full page newspaper ad that ran in the Journal the day before Thanksgiving 1959 promoting the gabby holiday spruce.
Unless my memory is faulty, I remember the talking Christmas tree still being there in the mid-1960's. It was outside in the courtyard that was surrounded by the various stores. My parents had to coax my siblings and me to go up and chat with it. (It did have a friendly, female voice – and asked a lot of questions.)
I remember being puzzled as to how a talking Christmas tree fit in with the whole Christmas legend. Nevertheless, it was a more innocent time, and I'm sure I attributed it to the magic of Christmas, the one time of the year when everything is geared to making little kids happy.