About Old-Fashioned Christmas Trees
Modern Christmas trees have greatly evolved over time from the old-fashioned Christmas trees that were first decorated in Europe hundreds of years ago. Old-fashioned Christmas trees became widely popular in Germany by the 1600s and from there, the custom of decorating fir trees at Christmas spread to other European countries. While you rarely see old-fashioned Christmas trees today, their significance to the Christmas holiday and their inherent symbolism are still alive today. Does this Spark an idea?
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History
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While Germany has been credited with creating the first old-fashioned Christmas tree, many historians now believe that the first decorated Christmas tree appeared in Riga, Latvia in 1510 A.D. Little is known about the first old-fashioned Christmas tree except that after decorating it and performing a ceremony around it, it was burned in a mixture of Christian and pagan traditions.
Martin Luther is said to have decorated the first old-fashioned Christmas tree in Germany on Christmas Eve in 1605 A.D. Legend has it that Luther was walking home that evening and was in awe of the night's beauty as the stars seemed to rest on the branches of a tall fir tree. Luther cut down a small fir tree, took it home to his family, and decorated the old-fashioned Christmas tree with lit candles to resemble the glowing effect created by the stars on the tree he saw earlier in the night.
Geography
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These old-fashioned Christmas trees became widely popular in Germany and throughout central Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the 1840s, the old-fashioned Christmas tree tradition spread to England when Queen Victoria's husband brought a tree from Germany and decorated it in Windsor Castle. It was also in the mid-1800s that decorated old-fashioned Christmas trees became popular in the United States.
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Features
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Most of these old-fashioned Christmas trees all had one thing in common--they were decorated with a variety of homemade ornaments and lit candles. Silver tinsel was used to decorate old-fashioned Christmas trees beginning in the early 1600s in Germany and has continued to be a common adornment of Christmas trees ever since. Old-fashioned Christmas trees were also decorated with shaped gingerbread cookies, hand-crafted wax ornaments, paper flowers, colored beads, hand-sewn snowflakes and stars and angels to sit on the top. It was not until the mid-1800s that more elaborate glass ornaments were created and used to decorate old-fashioned Christmas trees. Small wooden toys also began to appear as old-fashioned Christmas tree ornaments in the mid-nineteenth century.
Effects
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In a rather short time frame, old-fashioned Christmas trees became the primary decoration associated with Christmas in parts of Europe and North America. Christmas trees quickly evolved from simply decorated, hand-crafted creations to overly-decorated, store-bought creations. Nonetheless, old-fashioned Christmas trees helped spread and popularize the Christmas tree tradition that, though altered, is still a central aspect of Christmas today.
Considerations
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Old-fashioned Christmas trees appear to have had roots in both pagan and Christian practice. Evergreen trees were central to many pagan cultures in Europe during the winter solstice when their branches were cut and used as decoration in homes. These pagan cultures believed that evergreen trees had special powers since they stayed green year-round, even throughout the harsh European winters. According to legend, St. Boniface, aware that pagans revered the fir tree, used its triangular shape to teach about the Holy Trinity in Germany in the 600s. His teachings helped convert many to Christianity and propagated the importance of the fir tree, which eventually led it to be used as the basis for old-fashioned Christmas trees.
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