Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that were green all year had significant meaning for people in the winter.
Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, earlier civilizations hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows.
In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.
In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice.
Many ancient civilizations believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become weak.
They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well.
Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong and summer would return.
In Northern Europe the Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life.
The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder.
It was Germany that most likely started the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes.
It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the 16th-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree.
Most 19th-century Americans found Christmas trees to be a strange practice.
The first record of one being on display was in the 1830s by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, although trees had been a tradition in many German homes much earlier.
The Pennsylvania German settlements had community trees as early as 1747.
But, even by the 1840s Christmas trees were seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.
It is not surprising that, like many other festive Christmas customs, the tree was slow to be adopted in America.
To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred.
The pilgrims’s second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the observance, penalizing any such nonsense frivolity.
The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against “the heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event.”
In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations.
That stern solemnity continued until the 19th century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermined the Puritan legacy.
In 1846, the popular royals, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were illustrated in the London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree.
Of course, what was done at court immediately became fashionable—not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society.
The time for the Christmas tree had arrived.
The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees with homemade ornaments, while the German-Americans continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies.
Popcorn strings with berries and nuts became popular.
