The Christmas Tree

Early Evergreens

The use of an evergreen tree in association with the Christmas celebration stems back to pre-Christian pagan celebrations. At this time, people would take in evergreen boughs or trees at the time of winter solstice to protect the home and to insure the return of green vegetation. The evergreen was a symbol of rebirth and life amid winter whiteness. During the winter solstice, around December 21st, the Druidic priests of ancient Britain decorated trees outdoors with apples and lit candles, placing them ever so cautiously on the branches, in order to express their gratitude to their god Odin for his bestowing fruits upon them. The Druids are the first known people to have decorated trees for a religious purpose in the winter.

The Christian Tree

Following the advent of Christ, the evergreen became a symbol used by Christianity to represent eternal life, which is “the greatest of all the gifts of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 14:7).

A legend of St. Boniface, an English monk who lived in the 7th Century, tells of how he used the fir tree as an example of the tree of life and used its triangular shape to describe the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, evergreens with apples hanging from their boughs were used as part of miracle plays presented on December 24th, which was known as Adam and Eve’s Day. The evergreen, the main prop used in the play, was used since apple trees were bare at that time of year.

The first historical reference to the use of an evergreen for a Christmas celebration occurred in Riga, Latvia on Christmas Eve, 1510. After a festive dinner, black-hatted merchantmen carried an evergreen decorated with artificial roses to the marketplace. After dancing around the tree, they set fire to it. As early as 1531 in Strasbourg, France (formerly a part of Germany) Christmas trees were known to be sold in the market and taken to be set up undecorated in homes for the holiday. This can be assumed to have been a common practice since there was a 16th century ordinance passed in nearby Ammerschweier which limited the height to no “more than eight shoe lengths”.

The Indoor Tree

A German legend of the Christmas tree is attributed to Martin Luther’s celebration of Christmas Eve of 1519. On his way home at night, Martin Luther saw his way clearly because of the stars that shone so brightly in the reflected snow. He went out into the forest and returned with a beautiful fir tree, bringing it into his home so his family could admire it. He then placed glowing candles atop the branches to emulate the starlight outside, and stated that the candles represented the shining stars in the heavens above Bethlehem, some fifteen centuries earlier.

The earliest recorded Christmas tree to be standing up and decorated inside the home as the tradition occurs today was described in a travel diary of an unidentified visitor to Strasbourg in 1605 which was decorated with many colored paper roses, flat wafers, gilded candies, and sugar. The rose was a symbol for Mary, and the wafer was a symbol of the communion or sacrament wafer.

By the 1600’s, such trees were a common sight in German Christian homes each Christmas. In parts of Austria and Germany, some trees were hung upside down from the ceiling, and decorated with strips of red paper, apples and gilded nuts. Trees were usually set up on a table. Candles fastened to branches also became a popular decoration in the seventeenth century. Other ornaments included candies, cookies, fruits and potatoes, sweetmeats, dolls, and toys.

The American Tree

The oldest known reference to the Christmas tree in America was in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in 1747 among German speaking Moravians, who also gave the first Christmas presents in the New World. These were actually pyramid constructions of evergreen boughs. The earliest Christmas trees were small table-size trees; the idea of a floor to ceiling Christmas tree didn’t become popular until the mid-1800’s. Christmas trees were originally present-bearers, decorated largely with gifts of toys and edibles. Originally, family trees were unveiled on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning; the children believed the tree was brought by Santa.

The first “flocked” trees were also introduced by the Pennsylvania German immigrants. The trees were stripped of their needles after they were dried out, and then wrapped in cotton. These trees were often stored for use again in future years.

The widespread use of a Christmas tree in both America and England did not take hold until the mid to late 1800’s. Although Clement C. Moore’s A Visit From St. Nicholas, written in 1822, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, written in 1848, created a solid foundation for modern-day Christmas traditions, neither of them make mention of the Christmas tree. In 1834, Britain’s Queen Victoria and her German husband Prince Albert were the first to bring a Christmas tree into Windsor Castle, introducing the tradition to the British Empire. Not until 1850 did Charles Dickens make mention of a Christmas tree in his writings, which he described as a “German toy”.

In the 1850’s, the German company Lauscha began to manufacture glass ornaments for Christmas trees, including shaped glass balls, icicles, bead garlands and gilded-tin angels. These soon became popular throughout America. In the 1860’s the idea of stringing popcorn and hang as garlands on the tree became popular. Wax ornaments of baby Jesus, angels and animals, as well as designed cardboard ornaments, were common in the latter half of the 1800’s.

In 1882, New Yorker Edward Johnson invented the first electric tree lights. The tree-lighting ceremony, a favorite American holiday event, had its origins in Germany.