How long has the Christmas tree been in existence? Creation information

Since when the Christmas tree has been in use, you may have asked yourself. The decorated tree simply belongs to Christmas. However, this was not always the case.

Christmas tree - a tradition with pagan roots

Christmas has been celebrated for a long time, but the tradition of the decorated Christmas tree was not part of it from the start.

• Evergreen plants have always accompanied pagan festivals. They symbolized vitality and fertility.
• This is how the Teutons decorated their houses and squares with fir branches at the winter solstice. The Romans decorated a tree in honor of their sun god Mithras.
• Since the Middle Ages, it has been common practice to decorate a tree on certain occasions. Examples include the maypole or the topping-out tree at the topping-out ceremony.
• In Christianity, until the second Vatican Council, Christmas, or more precisely December 24, was a new day of remembrance in favor of Adam and Eve. Also in the Middle Ages, a tree was decorated with apples in the church.
• The first evidence of a decorated fir tree can be found in the guild chronicle of the urban handicraft of Bremen from 1597. The guild use finally passed to the higher families and at the beginning of the 17th century some decorated trees were found in living rooms, mainly in Alsace,
• The custom was widespread in the 18th century. However, Christmas trees were usually found in the homes of wealthy citizens and high officials. Other families could not yet afford the fir trees, as they were still rare in Central Europe.
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was also responsible for the distribution: In his novel "The Suffering of Young Werther", published in 1774, he mentioned a festively decorated Christmas tree.
• Only in the 19th century, because of the high demand, fir and spruce forests were finally created on a large scale and thus fir and spruce decorated in more and more living rooms were at Christmas.
• The custom was brought to North America by a Havard professor of German origin who continued the tradition in 1832 in his new home. In the United States, a Christmas tree with electric lights glowed for the first time in 1882, and the first Christmas tree in the White House followed in 1892.
• Incidentally, the Catholic Church was not enthusiastic about the pagan custom for a long time. The fact that churches are decorated with a Christmas tree for Christmas was only allowed by the Vatican in the 20th century.
• The first Christmas tree on St. Peter's Square in Rome was only introduced by Pope John Paul II in 1982 - that was not so long ago. So what feels like an ancient tradition to us is still a very young custom in the Catholic Church.

A less well-known custom is to decorate the tree with the Christmas cucumber: we will explain the legend behind it in the next article.