A tree is part of many people's holiday season. Cutting your
own tree,
selecting one at the local
lot or bringing in a living tree are all part of modern
family traditions.
To many, decorating a tree marks the beginning of the holiday
season.
Everyone in the home
senses the aroma, beauty and special adventure of having a
tree. But
in America, it wasn't always
widely associated with the winter holidays.
The roots (no pun intended) of tree use can be traced back
before the
birth of Jesus Christ to early
Egyptians who would bring palms indoors as symbols of
eternal life.
Ancient Jewish religious
feasts included decorations made of tree boughs.
In the Western world, most experts think our holiday use of
trees derives
from Rome. The
Romans exchanged tree boughs with friends for luck, and they
celebrated
their winter festival by
decorating the house with tree boughs and greenery. They
paraded trees
around with candles and
trinkets attached to the branches.
Many Christian traditions were borrowed from older pagan
celebrations.
Pope Gregory I, around
A.D. 600, told churchmen to encourage harmless folk customs,
such as
the use of greenery and
trees, where they could make Christian interpretations.
In the 700s, St. Boniface encouraged pagan nature worshipers
to stay
out of the dark forest and
take a tree indoors to worship in the light and warmth of
the one true
God.
Across Europe, people used tree-based folk tales to teach
children about
the celebration of
Christ's birth. The evergreen tree's symbolism of eternal
life was
strong.
Martin Luther may have begun the modern Christmas tree
tradition in
Germany around 1500. It
was said that Luther was walking on a bright, snow-covered,
star-lit
night, pondering the birth of
Christ. He was enthralled by the evergreen trees, the stars
and the
landscape.
Luther took a tree inside and put candles on it to try to
represent
the majesty he felt about Christ's
birth. By the early 1600s, many German towns were
celebrating Christmas
with elaborately
decorated trees.
German mercenaries fighting for the British in the
Revolutionary War
brought the Christmas tree
tradition to the United States.
But old Puritan doctrine banned any celebration at Christmas.
Holiday
festivities around a
decorated tree took a while to become established in America.
In the 1840s, the use of Christmas trees across the Christian
world
exploded. From the royal
family in England to the elite of America, Christmas trees
were fashionable.
In 1851, the first retail tree lot was set up on a sidewalk in New York City and sold out quickly.
The White House led the way to holiday trees. The first U.S.
President
to show off his White
House tree was Franklin Pierce. Benjamin Harrison declared
his White
House tree to be part of
an old-fashioned American tradition in 1889.
By the 1880s, the Christmas tree market was large. Large
numbers of
wild trees were harvested
from the native forests.
Theodore Roosevelt decided that for the sake of forest
conservation
the White House would not
have a Christmas tree. But his two sons sneaked a small tree
into their
room and were caught, to
their father's embarrassment.
Today, the Christmas tradition that came to this country
as "German
toys" has multigenerational
and multicultural identity. The sense of identifying holiday
trees
with family and friends is
socially important.
Take a moment to truly look at your tree this year and see the history in it.
