A Chronological History of the Christmas Tree

By Maria Hubert von Staufer, World Society

The St. Boniface Story

Why do we have a decorated Christmas Tree? In the 7th century a monk from Devonshire, England, went to Germany to teach the word of God. He did many good works there, and spent much time in Thuringia, an area which was to become the cradle of the region’s Christmas decoration industry.

Legend has it that he used the triangular shape of the fir tree to describe the Holy Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The converted people began to revere the fir tree as God's tree, much as they had previously revered the oak. By the 12th century it was being hung, upside-down, from ceilings at Christmastime in Central Europe as a symbol of Christianity.

The first decorated tree was at Riga in Latvia, in 1510. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small Christmas tree with candles to show his children how the stars twinkled through the dark night.

Christmas Markets

In the mid-16th century, Christmas markets were set up in German towns to provide everything from gifts and food to more practical things, such as grinders to sharpen the knives used to carve the Christmas goose. At these fairs, bakers made shaped gingerbreads and wax ornaments for people to buy as souvenirs of the fair, and take home to hang on their Christmas trees.

The best record of these early markets we have is that of a visitor to Strasbourg in 160. He records a tree decorated with "wafers and golden sugar-twists, and paper flowers of all colors." The early trees were symbolic of the Paradise tree (which symbolized both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life) in the Garden of Eden. The many food items were symbols of plenty, while the flowers originally were only two colors: red, for knowledge; and white, for innocence.

Tinsel

Tinsel was invented in Germany around 1610. At that time real silver was used, and machines were invented which pulled the silver out into wafer-thin strips. Silver was durable, but tarnished quickly, especially with candlelight. Attempts were made to use a mixture of lead and tin, but this was heavy and tended to break under its own weight so was not so practical. So silver was used for tinsel right up to the mid-20th century.

The First English Trees

The Christmas tree first came to England with the Georgian kings, who came from Germany. Although German merchants living in England decorated their homes with Christmas trees, and the English were aware of the custom, they weren’t fond of the German monarchs and didn’t copy the fashions at court. So, the Christmas tree did not take root in Britain at that time. Those few families that did have Christmas trees were more influenced by their German neighbors than they were by the royals.

Decorations at that time included tinsel, silver wire ornaments, candles and small beads. All these had been manufactured in Germany and East Europe since the 17th century. The custom was to have several small trees on tables, one for each member of the family, with that person’s gifts stacked on the table under the tree.

The Victorian and Albert Tree

In 1846, the popular royals, Queen Victoria and her German prince, Albert, were illustrated in the Illustrated London News. They were standing with their children around a Christmas tree. Unlike the previous monarch, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at court immediately became fashionable – not only in Britain, but also with fashion-conscious East Coast American society. The English Christmas tree had arrived!

Decorations were still of a home-made variety. Young ladies spent hours at Christmas crafts, quilling (making paper filigree) snowflakes and stars, sewing little pouches for secret gifts and making paper baskets with sugared almonds in them. Small bead decorations and finely drawn- out silver tinsel came from Germany, together with beautiful Angels, to sit at the top of the tree. Candles were often placed into wooden hoops for safety.

Mid-Victorian Tree

In the 1850's, the German glassmaking city of Lauscha in Thuringia began to produce fancy shaped glass bead garlands for Christmas trees, and short garlands made from necklace “bugles” and beads. These were readily available in Germany, but not produced in sufficient quantities to export to Britain. The Rauschgoldengel was a common sight. Literally, “tingled-angel,” it was found in the Thuringian Christmas markets, dressed in pure gilded tin.

The 1860's English tree had become more innovative than the delicate trees of earlier decades. Small toys were popularly hung on the branches, but still most gifts were placed on the table under the tree.

Around this time, the Christmas tree was spreading into other parts of Europe. The Mediterranean countries were not too interested in the tree, preferring to display only crèche scenes. Italy had a wooden triangle platform tree called a ceppo. This had a crèche scene, as well as decorations.

The German tree was beginning to make the country’s forests suffer from mass destruction. It had become the fashion to lop the tip off large trees to use as a Christmas tree, which prevented them from growing further. Statutes were passed to prevent people having more than one tree.

Just as the first trees introduced into Britain did not immediately take off, the early trees introduced into America by the Hessian soldiers were not recorded in any particular quantity. The Pennsylvanian German settlements had community trees as early as 1747.

America being so large, tended to have “pockets” of customs introduced by the immigrants who had settled in a particular area. It wasn’t until communications speeded up in the 19th century that the Christmas tree custom began to spread. Thus, references to decorated trees in America before about the middle of the 19th century were very rare.

By the 1870's, glass ornaments were being imported into Britain from Lauscha. It became a status symbol to have glass ornaments on the tree – the more one had, the higher one’s status. Still, many home-made decorations were used. The empire was growing, and the most popular tree topper was the Union Jack. Sometimes people used flags of the various nations of the empire or the flags of the allied countries. Trees got very patriotic.

The ornaments were imported into America around 1880, where they were sold through such stores as F.W. Woolworth. They were quickly followed by American patents for electric lights (1882), and metal hooks for safer hanging of decorations onto the trees (1892)

High Victorian Trees

By the 1880's, British Christmas trees had become a glorious hodgepodge of everything one could cram on. They had also grown large enough to become floor-standing trees. The limited availability of decorations in earlier decades had kept trees, by necessity, limited to table tops.  Now with decorations, as well as crafts, more popular and available than ever, there was no holding back. Now, more than ever, the Christmas tree was a status symbol: the larger the tree, the more affluent the family that sported it.

The High Victorian tree of the 1890's was a child's joy to behold: As tall as the room, and festooned with glitter, tinsel and toys galore! Even the middle classes managed to over-decorate their trees. It was a case of anything goes. Everything that could possibly go on a tree went onto it.

By 1900, themed trees were popular. Some followed a color scheme, carried out with ribbons or balls. Some had topical ideas, such as Oriental or Egyptian. They were to be the last of the great Christmas trees for some time. With the death of Victoria in 1901, Britain went into mourning and fine trees were not really in evidence until the 1930s when nostalgia for Dickensian fashion emerged.

The American Tree

In America, Christmas trees were introduced into several pockets. The German Hessian soldiers of the Revolutionary War era brought their tree customs with them. In Texas, cattle barons from Britain brought their customs with them in the 19th century and the East Coast society copied the English royal court’s tree customs.

Settlers from all over Europe also brought their Christmas customs with them in the 19th century. Decorations were not easy to find in the shanty towns of the West, so people began to make their own. Tin was pierced to create lights and lanterns to hold candles, which would shine through the holes. Decorations of all kinds were cutout, stitched and glued. General stores became hunting grounds for old magazines with pictures and rolls of cotton batting, as well as tinsel, which was occasionally sent from Germany or brought in from the eastern states. The paper Putz or Christmas crib was a popular feature under the tree, especially in the Moravian Dutch communities that settled in Pennsylvania.

The British Tree in the 20th Century

After Queen Victoria died, the country went into mourning, and the tree somehow died with her for a while in many homes. While some families and community groups still had large tinsel strewn trees, many opted for the more convenient table-top tree. These were available in a variety of sizes, and the artificial tree, particularly the goose feather tree, became popular. These were originally invented in the 1880's in Germany, to combat some of the damage being done to fir trees in the name of Christmas.

In America, the Addis Brush Company created the first brush trees, using the same machinery that made their toilet brushes! These had an advantage over the feather tree in that they could take heavier decorations.

After 1918, because of licensing and export problems, Germany was not able to export its decorations easily. The market was quickly taken up by Japan and America, especially in Christmas tree lights. Britain's Tom Smith Cracker Company, which had exported Christmas goods for over three decades, began to manufacture trees for a short while.

In the 1930's, nostalgia for the Dickensian era was strong, particularly in Britain. Christmas cards all sported crinoline ladies wearing the muffs and bonnets popular in the 1840's. Christmas trees became large and real again, and were decorated with many bells, balls and tinsels, and beautiful golden haired angels at the top. But wartime England put a stop to most of these trees. It was forbidden to cut trees down for decoration, and with so many German air raids, people preferred to keep their most precious heirloom Christmas tree decorations carefully stored away in metal boxes. Instead they had only small tabletop trees with home-made decorations that could be taken down into the shelters for a little Christmas cheer when the air-raid sirens sounded.

However, large trees were erected in public places to lift people’s morale. Postwar Britain saw a revival of nostalgia again. People needed the security of Christmas, so unchanging in a changing world, to help get them back on their feet. Trees were as large as people could afford. Many poorer families still used the tabletop goose feather trees, and America’s Addis brush trees were being imported into Britain and became immensely popular for a time.

But the favorites were still real trees. The popular decorations were all produced by a British manufacturer, Swanbrand, and sold by F.W. Woolworth in Britain. Popular decorations included translucent plastic lock-together shapes, honeycomb paper angels, glow-in the -dark icicles, and  Polish glass balls and birds. In South Wales, where real trees were often difficult to find in the rural areas, people decorated holly bushes.

The Modern Tree

The mid-1960's saw another change. A new world was on the horizon, and modernist ideas were everywhere. Silver aluminum trees were imported from America. The “Silver Pine” tree, patented in the 1950's, was designed to have a revolving light source under it, with colored gelatin “windows” that allowed the light to shine in different shades as it revolved under the tree. No decorations were needed for this tree.

Decorations became sparser. Glass balls and lametta (gold, silver or brass foil) created an elegant modern tree. Of course, many families ignored fashion and continued putting their own well-loved decorations on their trees.

America made a return to Victorian nostalgia in the 1970's, and it was a decade later that Britain followed the fashion. By the at first this was a refreshing look, and manufacturers realizing the potential created more and more fantastic decorations. Some American companies specialized in antique replicas, actually finding the original makers in Europe to recreate wonderful glass ornaments, real silver tinsel and pressed foil “Dresdens.”

Real Christmas trees were still popular, but many housewives preferred the convenience of authentic looking artificial trees. If your room was big enough, you could have a 14-foot artificial spruce right there in your living room without a single dropped needle – and it looked so good that it fooled everyone at first glance. There are even pine-scented sprays to put on the tree for that “real tree smell.”

By the late 1990's, the Christmas tree continued taking a Victorian form, but with new themes and conceptual designs: The Starry, Starry Night Tree, The Twilight Tree, The Snow Queen Tree.

What will the new millennium bring? Well, I do have some inside knowledge, but for now it must remain a secret!

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