by Why do so many people endure the mess of dried pine needles, the threat of a fire hazard, and impossibly tangled strings of lights every Christmas?
Sometimes when I strap a Christmas tree to the hood of my car and I’m concerned about the strength of the twine, I wonder if I should just buy an artificial tree and save myself all the hassle. Then my inner historian (opens in new tab) scold me – I need to remind myself that I take part in one of the oldest religious traditions in the world. Giving up the tree would mean giving up a ritual that took place before Christmas itself.
A symbol of life in a time of darkness
Almost all agrarian societies at some point independently worshiped the sun in their pantheon of gods—there was the Sol of the Norse (opens in new tab)the Aztec Huitzilopochtli (opens in new tab)the Greek Helios (opens in new tab).
The Solstice (opens in new tab), when the sun is at its highest and lowest point in the sky, were important events. The winter solstice, when the sky is at its darkest, has been a notable holiday in agrarian societies throughout human history. The Persian Shab-e Yalda (opens in new tab)Dongzhi in China (opens in new tab) and the North American Hopi Soyal (opens in new tab) all independently mark the occasion.
The favored decoration for old winter solstice? Evergreen plants.
Whether as palm branches collected in Egypt (opens in new tab) in celebration of Ra or wreaths for the Roman festival of Saturnalia (opens in new tab)Evergreens have long served as symbols of the permanence of life in the bleakness of winter and the promise of the sun’s return.
Christmas is slowly coming
Christmas came much later. The date was not set in the liturgical calendar until centuries after Jesus’ birth, and the English word Christmas—an abbreviation of “Christ’s Mass”—did not appear (opens in new tab) up to over 1,000 years after the original event.
While December 25 was ostensibly a Christian holiday, many Europeans simply adopted traditions from the winter solstice celebrations, which were notoriously noisy. For example, the 12 days of Christmas commemorated in the popular Christmas carol actually have their origins in ancient Germanic Christmas celebrations (opens in new tab).
The continued use of evergreens, particularly the Christmas tree, is the most visible remnant of these ancient solstice celebrations. Although Ernst Anschütz’s well-known 1824 Christmas song dedicated to the tree is translated into English as “O Christmas Tree”, the title of the original German tune is simply “Tannenbaum”, meaning “Tannenbaum”. In the song, which Anschütz is based on a much older Silesian folk love song, there is no reference to Christmas (opens in new tab). In keeping with ancient midsummer celebrations, the song praises the tree’s faithful hardiness during the dark and cold winter.
Bacchanal setback
The German Protestants of the 16th century, eager to remove the iconography and relics of the Roman Catholic Church, gave the Christmas tree a huge boost when they used it in place of nativity scenes. The reformer Martin Luther is said to have adopted the practice and added candles (opens in new tab)
But a century later, English Puritans frowned upon the disorderly holiday for lack of biblical legitimacy. They outlawed it in the 1650s (opens in new tab), with soldiers patrolling the streets of London looking for anyone daring to celebrate the day. Puritan colonists in Massachusetts did the same (opens in new tab)“fine anyone who celebrates Christmas or similar, either by abstaining from work, celebration or otherwise.”
German immigration to the American colonies ensured that the practice of trees would take root in the New World. Benjamin Franklin estimated that at least a third (opens in new tab) of Pennsylvania’s white population was German before the American Revolution.
Nonetheless, the German tradition of the Christmas tree flourished in the United States largely due to Britain’s German royal lineage.
Take a cue from the queen
Since 1701, English kings were forbidden to become or marry Catholics (opens in new tab). Germany, made up of a patchwork of kingdoms, lacked legitimate Protestant princes and princesses. Many British royals privately maintained the well-known custom of a Christmas tree, but Queen Victoria – who had both a German mother and a German paternal grandmother (opens in new tab) – made the practice public and fashionable.
Victoria’s style of rule reflected and shaped the outwardly austere, family-centric morality that dominated middle-class life during this period (opens in new tab). In the 1840s, Christmas became the target of reformers like the novelist Charles Dickens, who sought to turn the riotous celebrations of the largely marginal holiday into a family day when the people of the rapidly industrialized nation could relax, rejoice, and give thanks.
His 1843 novel A Christmas Carol (opens in new tab)‘, in which miserly Ebenezer Scrooge found redemption by adopting Dickens’ recipes for the holiday, was a hit with audiences. While the evergreen decor is evident in the hand-colored illustrations Dickens commissioned specifically for the book, there are no Christmas trees in these images.
Victoria added the fir tree to family celebrations five years later. Although Christmas trees had been part of private royal celebrations for decades, an 1848 edition of the London Illustrated News featured Victoria (opens in new tab) with her German husband and children decorating as a family at Windsor Castle.
The cultural impact was almost instantaneous. Christmas trees appeared in homes across England, its colonies and the rest of the English-speaking world. Dickens followed with his short story A Christmas Tree (opens in new tab)” two years later.
Adopting the tradition in America
During this period, the American middle class generally encompassed all things Victorian, from architecture to moral reform societies.
Sarah Hale (opens in new tab)the author, best known for her children’s poem Mary Had a Little Lamb, used her position as editor of the bestselling Godey’s Ladies Book magazine (opens in new tab) to advance a reformist agenda that included the abolition of slavery and the creation of holidays that promoted devout family values. Establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863 was perhaps their most enduring achievement (opens in new tab).
Closely followed by the Christmas tree.
While trees sporadically adorned the homes of German immigrants in the United States, it became a common middle-class practice when Godey’s published an engraving of Victoria and her Christmas tree in 1850 (opens in new tab). A supporter of Dickens and the movement to reinvent Christmas, Hale helped popularize the family Christmas tree across the pond.
It was not until 1870 that the United States recognized Christmas as a federal holiday (opens in new tab).
The practice of putting up public Christmas trees originated in the United States in the 20th century. In 1923, the first appeared on the South Lawn of the White House (opens in new tab). During the Great Depression, famous sites like New York’s Rockefeller Center began to grow taller and taller trees (opens in new tab).
Christmas trees are going global
As both American and British cultures spread their influence around the world, Christmas trees began to appear in countries that are not predominantly Christian. Shopping districts in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Tokyo are now regularly putting up trees (opens in new tab).
The modern Christmas tree is a universal symbol that carries both religious and secular meanings. Decorated with lights, they awaken hope and provide brightness for half the world in what is literally the darkest time of the year.
In this sense, the modern Christmas tree has come full circle.
This article is republished by The conversation (opens in new tab) under a Creative Commons license. read this original article (opens in new tab).
