The Christmas tree is one of the most popular traditions associated with the celebration of Christmas. Normally an evergreenconiferous tree that is brought into a home or used in the open, a Christmas tree is decorated with Christmas lights and colourfulornaments during the days around Christmas. An angel or star is often placed at the top of the tree, representing the host of angels or the Star of Bethlehem from the Nativity story.
History
[edit]Alleged pre-Christian roots
There has historically been opposition to the custom of the Christmas tree because of its alleged pagan origins. Thus, Oliver Cromwell preached against "the heathen traditions" of Christmas carols and decorated trees. As pastor Henry Schwan of Cleveland OH in 1851 decorating what was likely the first Christmas tree in an American church. His parishioners condemned the idea as a Pagan practice.
There are various legends regarding the origin of the Christmas tree, often relating to Saint Boniface. Thus, in one version, Boniface disrupted a pagan child sacrifice at an oak tree, flattening the oak with a blow of his fist. A small fir sprang up in place of the oak, which Boniface told the pagans represented Christ.[1]
Condemnation of the Christmas tree as pagan has been based on a passage in Jeremiah,
- "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not." (Jeremiah 10:2-4, KJV).
Christmas traditions in general have often been associated with paganism in 19th century scholarship. Robert Chambers in his 1832 Book of Days notes that the festivities of Christmasoriginally derived from the Roman Saturnalia , had afterwards been intermingled with the ceremonies observed by the British Druids at the period of winter-solstice, and at a subsequent period became incorporated with the grim mythology of the ancient Saxons. Two popular observances belonging to Christmas are more especially derived from the worship of our pagan ancestors—the hanging up of the mistletoe and the burning of the Yule log. Regarding the Christmas tree itself, Chambers notes that it seems to be a very ancient custom in Germany, and is probably a remnant of the splendid and fanciful pageants of the middle ages. Other traditions relating to Christmas that may derive from Germanic pagan practices include theChristmas ham, Yule Goat, stuffing stockings, elements of Santa Claus and his nocturnal ride through the sky, and elements of Alpine folklore.[2]
There are also some accounts that place the earliest Christmas trees in the Baltic (variously Estonia or Lativa), while in actuality the custom was introduced there in the 1920s.[3]
[edit]
Origin
A Christmas tree from 1900.
The custom of erecting a Christmas tree can be traced to 16th century Germany, though neither an inventor nor a single town can be identified as the sole origin for the tradition; in the Cathedral of Strasbourg in 1539, the church record mentions the erection of a Christmas tree. In that period, the guildsstarted erecting Christmas trees in front of their guildhalls: Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (Marburg professor of European ethnology) found a Bremen guildchronicle of 1570 which reports how a small fir was decorated with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers, and erected in the guild-house, for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas day.[4] Another early reference is from Basel, where the tailor apprentices carried around town a tree decorated with apples and cheese in 1597. In some accounts, Martin Luther is credited with adding lights and decoration to fir branches traditionally hung from ceilings.[5] During the 17th century, the custom entered family homes. One Strasbourg priest, Johann Konrad Dannerstuart, complains about the custom as distracting from the Word of God.
[edit]18th and 19th century
By the early 18th century, the custom had become common in towns of the upper Rhineland, but it had not yet spread to rural areas. Wax candles are attested from the late 18th century. The Christmas tree remained confined to the upper Rhineland for a relatively long time. It was regarded as a Protestant custom by the Roman Catholic majority along the lower Rhine and was spread there only by Prussian officials who were moved there in the wake of the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Just like Christmas (Germanic Yuletide), the Christmas tree was "adopted" by the Roman Catholic Church because it could not prevent its use.
In the early 19th century, the custom became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts as far as Russia. Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Christmas tree to Vienna in 1816, and the custom spread across Austria in the following years. In France, the first Christmas tree was introduced in 1840 by the duchesse d'Orléans.
In Britain, the Christmas tree was introduced in the time of the personal union with Hanover, by George III's Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz but the custom did not spread much beyond the royal family. Queen Victoria as a child was familiar with the custom. In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the delighted 13-year-old princess wrote, "After dinner...we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room...There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees...". After her marriage to her German cousin, Prince Albert, the custom became even more widespread. In 1847, Prince Albert wrote: "I must now seek in the children an echo of what Ernest [his brother] and I were in the old time, of what we felt and thought; and their delight in the Christmas-trees is not less than ours used to be". A woodcutof the royal family with their Christmas tree at Osborne House, initially published in the Illustrated London News of December 1848, was copied in theUnited States at Christmas 1850 (illustration, left). Such patriotic prints of the British royal family at Christmas celebrations helped popularise the Christmas tree in Britain and among the Anglophile American upper class.
Several cities in the United States with German connections lay claim to that country's first Christmas tree: Windsor Locks, Connecticut, claims that a Hessian soldier put up a Christmas tree in 1777 while imprisoned at the Noden-Reed House, while the "First Christmas Tree in America" is also claimed by Easton, Pennsylvania, where German settlers purportedly erected a Christmas tree in 1816. In his diary, Matthew Zahm of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, recorded the use of a Christmas tree in 1821 -- leading Lancaster to also lay claim to the first Christmas tree in America.[6] Other accounts creditCharles Follen, a German immigrant to Boston, for being the first to introduce to America the custom of decorating a Christmas tree.[7] August Imgard, a German immigrant living in Wooster, Ohio, is the first to popularise the practice of decorating a tree with candy canes. In 1847, Imgard cut a blue spruce tree from a woods outside town, had the Wooster village tinsmith construct a star, and placed the tree in his house, decorating it with paper ornaments and candy canes. The National Confectioners' Association officially recognises Imgard as the first ever to put candy canes on a Christmas tree; the canes were all-white, with no red stripes. Imgard is buried in the Wooster Cemetery, and every year, a large pine tree above his grave is lit with Christmas lights.
[edit]20th century
Many cities, towns, and department stores put up public Christmas trees outdoors, such as the Rich's Great Tree in
