How Did Decorating Trees Became Christmas Tradition?
Christmas has several traditions attached to it. One of them, the most famous, is the tradition to decorate Christmas trees.
Rural English church records from the 15th and 16th centuries show the use of holly and ivy to decorate the house in the winter.
In the book Christmas: A Biography, an account mentions a storm in London that destroyed a poll described as “for disport of Christmas to the people.”
In 1419 Freiburg, trees were decorated with apples, flour-paste wafers, tinsel, and gingerbread. To celebrate the feast day of Adam and Eve, a tree of knowledge was represented by a fir with apples tied to its branches and leaves.
There are even documentation and other evidence of trees decorated with wool thread, straw, apples, nuts, and pretzels. By the 15th century, the demand for these trees skyrocketed.
Evidence and references of festive trees in America date back to the late 18th century and early 19th century.
In 1805, a school sent their students “to fetch a small green tree for Christmas.” It picked up and evolved from that point to this date where a celebration is incomplete without tree decoration.