|
 Lighted Christmas trees are the image we see in our heads when some one mentions the words “Christmas tree.” The lighted Christmas tree – draped in tinsel and ornaments, sprinkled with spray-on snow and laced with garland and bows is the symbol of the American Christmas – more so than even the ubiquitous Santa Claus. There is not a Department Store, school yard, lonely roadside café in the farthest part of the Arizona desert that does not sport a lighted Christmas tree in its window around December. Today the lighted Christmas tree is Christmas.
So where did the tradition of the Christmas tree come from? Historians recount that in the late Middle Ages the descendents of the Goths, Visigoths, and Norsemen (what would be Germany and Scandinavia) placed boughs of evergreen trees inside their dwellings or above the entrance to their homes around the winter solstice in celebration of the shortest, darkest day of the year, and the fact that now spring and all that was green and fruitful was on the way. In Northern England and Ireland the Druids, the mysterious priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of new and everlasting life.
One legend has it that Martin Luther, the leader of the great religious revolt of the sixteenth century in Germany, began the tradition of decorating trees to celebrate Christmas. One crisp and snowy Christmas Eve, in the Black Forest along the Rhine River, sometime around the year 1500 - as he walked through the shadowy glens, the beauty of the quiet woods and particularly a small strand of evergreens struck him with their beauty. Their branches shimmered in the moon light beneath their dusting of snow. When he got home, he set up a little fir tree indoors so he could share this story with his children. He decorated it with candles, which he lighted in honor of Christ's birth.
The tradition of the lighted Christmas tree first began by using small candles to light up the tree and dates back to the 17th century. Tradition moved slowly as it took about two centuries for the tradition to become widely established in Germany, and then continuing to spread to Eastern Europe. Candles for the tree were glued with melted wax to a tree branch or attached by pins. In the 1890’s, the Christmas candles for the first time were placed in specifically designed candleholders. Sometime between the years 1902 and 1914, glass balls and small lanterns were used to hold the candles.
The first Christmas tree lit by the use of electricity was in 1882. A Mr. Edward Johnson of New York City lighted a Christmas tree with eighty small electric light bulbs (Mr. Johnson was a “mucker”, or engineer who worked for Thomas Edison). It was Edward Johnson who created the first string of electric Christmas lights. These new electric lights were mass produced around 1890. Department stores started using the new Christmas lights for their lighted Christmas tree displays in 1900. They are now one of the most widely used decorations for the holiday season.
|
