The History of the Christmas Tree
The tradition of having an evergreen
treegoes back past recorded written history.
The Druids in ancient England & Gaul and the Romans both used
evergreen branches to decorate their homes and public buildings
to celebrate the Winter Solstice.
Over the years, these traditions were adopted by Christians,
who incorporated them as part of their Christmas holiday celebration.
Trees used specifically to celebrate Christmas are mentioned
in the early 1600's in Germany and surrounding countries. The
families would set up these trees in a prominent location of
their home and decorate them with colored paper, small toys,
food, and sometimes candles.
As these people moved or immigrated to other countries, they
brought this tradition with them. Through the years many different
things were used to decorate Christmas trees.
As the world moved into the 1900's, many trees were decorated
with strings of popcorn, homemade cards and pictures, cotton
to look like snow, candy in all shapes and sizes, and occasionally,
fancy store made glass balls and hand blown glass figurines.
Candles were sometimes used, but often caused devastating fires,
and many different types of candle holders were devised to try
to prevent tree fires.
Electric tree lights were first used just 3 years after Thomas
Edison has his first mass public demonstration of electric lights
back in 1879. The early Christmas tree lights were handmade
and quite expensive.
