Facts about the CHRISTMAS TREE Tradition in America
A familiar sight today, the Christmas tree tradition grew slowly in America. In Massachusetts, the Puritans outlawed the celebration Christmas for much of the 17th century. Banned in Boston, the Christmas tree first took root in Pennslvania, transplanted by German immigrants to "Penn's Woodland" in the 18th century.
The Pennsylvanis "Dutch" (anglicized for 'Deutsch,' meaning German) Christmas tree was a small juniper lighted with tiny tapered candles and decorated with apples, nuts, strings of popcorn and cranberries and -most important of all - COOKIES. These were no ordinary cookies. They were WORKS OF ART! In fact, a few of these elaborately decorated cookie ornaments actaully survived hungry children and can be seen today in American museums. Pennsylvania Dutch women cherished their cookie molds and cutters - and tried to have at least one design that was theirs alone.
1747: The first known Christmas tree in America was in Bethlehem, PA in 1747
1825: Philadelphia's Saturday Evening Post reported seeing "Christmas trees visible through the windows."
1832: A Harvard professor of German, Chalres Follen, decorated a Christmas tree for his son and wrote of the event "I have little doubt the Christmas tree will become one of the most flourishing exotics of New England."
1833: A German settler near Belleville Illinois obtained a sassafras tree and decorated it with apples, sweets, candles, ribbons, paper and nuts. This same year, a New York Times editor reflected the lack of acceptance of the Christma tree and predicted that "this rootless and lifess corpse" would soon disappear and that the good old Christmas stocking of his childhood would return. The Christmas tree grew in popularity - and it grew in size. The small tree that was placed on a table in the early days was soon to become a floor-to-ceiling American innovation.
1845: The first picture published in America of a Santa Claus figure with a Christmas tree was the title page of an 1845 children's book "Kriss Kringle's Christmas Tree" published by E. Ferrett & Co. of Philadelphia.
1850: Two popular magazines, Harper's Weekly and Godey's Lady's Book, gave the Christmas tree a further boost. The December 1850 cover of the the Lady's Book was a family around a Christmas tree. The Christmas tree of a well-to-do Victorian family was, at this time, a small fir tree with a miniature world of tiny houses, animals and such. The miniature world often included the nativity, Noah's ark, and an endless variety of small dolls and figures.
1851: A niece of Jefferson Davis created a Christmas tree for her children in Vicksburg. "I never saw one," she wrote, "but leaned from some of the German stories..."
1856: President Franklin Pierce introduced the Christmas tree to the White House.
1862: "Christmas trees are the fashion in San Francisco," wrote botantist William Brewer.
1869: Commerical import of German-made ornaments began.
1871: A New York glassmaker, Wiliam De Muth, produced the first American-made silver glass balls.
1890: A great variety of Christmas whimsies - imports and products of America - were available. Despite this cornucopia of decorations, the average American family relied primarily on homemade ornaments to decorate its Christmas tree.
Credits: Ink Mendelsohn, Smithsonian News Service
The CHRISTMAS TREE Tradition in America
