In 1805, a school for American Indians run by Moravian missionaries sent students “to fetch a small green tree for Christmas.” Similar examples pop up in the first half of the 19th century in the Midwest and further West, such as the German immigrants in Texas who decorated trees with moss, cotton, pecans, red pepper swags and popcorn. Flanders mentions a reference to a pine tree in North Carolina in 1786. References to Christmas trees in private homes or establishments in North America date back to the late 18th century and early 19th century. Ordinances throughout the region of Alsace limited each household to one tree in the 1530s. Flanders says the “first decorated indoor tree” was recorded in 1605, in Strasbourg, decorated with roses, apples, wafers and other sweets, according to her research.ĭemand for Christmas trees was so high in the 15th century that laws were passed in Strasbourg cracking down on people cutting pine branches. The oldest Christmas tree market is thought to have been located just over the southwestern German border in Strasbourg in Alsace (which was back then part of the Rhineland, now in present-day France), where unadorned Christmas trees were sold during the 17th century as Weihnachtsbaum, German for Christmas tree. All of these stories may have helped the Christmas tradition spread. Boniface legend say he cut down the new fir tree and hung it upside down, which is believed to have led to the tradition of trees being hung upside down to represent the Holy Trinity - sometimes with an apple wedged at the point instead of a star. Boniface, who in the 8th century thwarted a pagan human sacrifice under an oak tree by cutting down that tree a fir tree grew in its place, with its branches representing Christ’s eternal truth. Another myth popular in the 15th century tells the story of St. One legend says that Martin Luther, who catalyzed the Protestant Reformation, believed that pine trees represented the goodness of God. Flanders posits that a precursor to the Christmas tree can be seen in the pole that parishes would decorate with holly and ivy, like a winter Maypole one account describes a storm in London that knocked over a poll that’s described as “for disport of Christmas to the people.”Ī lot of myths surround the origins of Christmas trees. Records of using greenery to celebrate the holidays predate widespread use of the phrase “Christmas tree.” Rural English church records from the 15th and 16th centuries indicate that holly and ivy were bought in the winter - hence the British carol “The Holly and the Ivy.” Private houses and streets were also decorated with greenery at this time, according to Judith Flanders’ Christmas: A Biography.
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