The Christmas tree probably
developed in part from the "Paradise Tree."
This was an evergreen decorated with apples,
used in a popular play about Adam and Eve held
on December 24th in medieval Germany. During the 1300s and 1400s,
evergreens with apples hanging from their boughs
played an important part in plays. Few
people could read at that time, so theatrical
presentations were used to teach the Bible to
the congregation. In those days, December
24th was Adam and Eve's Day, the occasion for a
play depicting the dramatic events concerning
the Garden of Eden. A tree was the only
prop on stage during the play, and it made a
lasting impression.
Maybe the explanation should
look back to Latvia and Estonia. In the
Baltic port cities of Riga, in 1510, and Reval
in 1514, where two tree celebrations were
recorded. In each city after Christmas
Eve, after a festive dinner, black-hatted
members of the local merchants' guild carried an
evergreen tree decorated with artificial roses
to the marketplace. There they danced
around the tree and then set fire to it.
Perhaps the tradition dates
back to 1531 in Alsace, then a German territory
but now part of France. Christmas trees
there were sold in the Strasbourg market and
taken into homes where they were set up
undecorated for the holiday. According to
the travel diary of an identified traveler in
Strasbourg in 1605, more Germans were decorating
their homes with evergreens for Christmas.
They trimmed the trees with fruits, nuts,
lighted candles, and paper roses. Later
decorations included painted eggshells, cookies,
and candies.
The first Christmas trees in
the United States were probably in 1747 at a
German settlement in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
The 1825 Saturday Evening Post was the
first place we saw trees mentioned in cities, in
this case describing Philadelphia. The
earliest tree in American literature appeared in
the Token and Atlantic Souvenir in 1836,
describing the decoration of a tree.
Developments continued, for example, with the
1890s Ladies' Home Journal explaining how
to place cotton along limbs simulating snow.
The rest, as they say, is history. The
custom of trimming Christmas trees had spread
rapidly throughout the world.
Today, some form of Christmas
tree is part of every Christmas celebration.
Decorations include tinsel, bright ornaments and
candy canes. A star is mounted on top of
many Christmas trees and other Christmas
displays. It represents the star that led
the wise men to the stable in Bethlehem where
Jesus was born.
Christmas Tree Farming
How trees became part of the
American Christmas is made up of a series of
small beginnings.
The first tree farmer is believed to be Mark
Carr in 1851, who transported firs and spruces
via ox sled and steamboat from the Catskills to
New York. An 1895 article from the New
England Magazine describes:
Quick and certain was his
success, exceeding his fondest expectations.
Eagerly customers flocked to purchase the
mountain novelties, at what appeared to the
unsophisticated country man very exorbitant
prices. It did not take long to exhaust
the entire stock.
Trees are first mentioned for
sale in Philadelphia in 1848. By the 1880s a veritable
forest of trees, more than 200,000, were headed
for New York. Chicago, Washington, and
other markets soon followed. The first
time a tree was in the Presidential mansion was
in 1856 (Franklin D. Roosevelt was a Christmas
Tree Farm in the 1930s). One record from
1907 in New Jersey reports that a tree cost $1.
Today there are more than one million acres of
trees growing in the U.S. each year.
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View history and background of Santa Claus
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Learn about tree recycling
