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Christmas Trees
Interesting facts about Christmas
trees
A Christmas
tree is a decorated tree, usually an evergreen conifer
such as spruce, pine, or fir or an artificial tree of similar
appearance, associated with the celebration of Christmas.
Even before the time of Christ, evergreen trees had a special
meaning for people in the winter.
In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away
witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.
The Romans treated
the solstice as more of a celebration by holding a feast called the Saturnalia
in honor of the god of agriculture, Saturn.
The Romans
looked ahead toward spring, knowing that soon everything would be green and
thriving once more. They would celebrate the coming of spring by decorating
their homes with evergreen boughs.
In Northern Europe the mysterious
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.
Modern Christmas trees originated during the Renaissance of early
modern Germany. Its 16th-century origins are sometimes associated with
Protestant Christian reformer Martin Luther who is said to have first added
lighted candles to an evergreen tree.
However,
the first written record of a decorated Christmas Tree comes from Riga, Latvia in
year 1510.
Men
of the local merchants’ guild decorated a tree with artificial roses, danced
around it in the marketplace and then set fire to it. The rose was used for
many year and is considered to be a symbol for the Virgin Mary.
There is a record from 1530
in Alsace, France (then German territory), that trees were sold in the
marketplace and brought home and set up undecorated. Laws limited the size to
“8 shoe lengths”
(slightly over 1.2 meters or 4 feet).
(slightly over 1.2 meters or 4 feet).
The tree was traditionally decorated with “roses made of
colored paper, apples, wafers, tinsel and sweetmeats”,
with the apples and round ornaments representing the fruit of knowledge of good
and evil from the Book of Genesis in the Christian Bible.
Introduced
into England in the early 19th century, the Christmas tree was popularized
in the mid-19th century by German Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria.
The
Victorian tree was decorated with toys and small gifts, candles, candies,
popcorn strings, and fancy cakes hung from the branches by ribbon and by paper
chains.
Taken to North America by German settlers as early as the 17th
century, Christmas trees were the height of fashion by the 19th century.
By
the 1890’s Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and Christmas tree
popularity was on the rise around the U.S. It was noted that Europeans used
small trees about 1.2 meters (4 feet) in height, while Americans liked their
Christmas trees to reach from floor to ceiling.
The early
20th century saw Americans decorating their trees mainly with
homemade ornaments, while the German-American sect continued to use apples,
nuts, and sweetmeats.
Popcorn
joined in after being dyed bright colors and interlaced with berries and nuts.
Electricity
brought about Christmas lights, making it possible for Christmas trees to glow
for days on end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares
across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American
tradition.
Today, there is a wide variety of traditional
ornaments, such as garlands, baubles, tinsel, and candy canes.
An
angel or star might be placed at the top of the tree to represent the archangel
Gabriel or the Star of Bethlehem from the Nativity.
One-of-a-kind Christmas bauble hit headlines in
2009 as the world’s most expensive Christmas bauble.
Made
of 18 carat white gold and plastered with more than one and a half thousand
diamonds, the globe shape is orbited by two rings, featuring 188 rubies.
It’s
been valued by the National Associations of Jewelers at $130,000 and was
created by a tiny, village jewellers in Titchfield, Hampshire (UK).
In
2013 Finnish floral designer Pasi Jokinen-Carter created what’s being called “the most expensive Christmas
wreath in the world” — a $4.6
million creation that mixes some fancy holiday shrubbery with
17.49 karat rubies and a 3.03 karat fancy yellow diamonds.
The Rockefeller Center Christmas
Tree has been a national tradition each year since 1933. The
tree ranges in size from 18 to 30 meters (60 to 100 feet) tall from year to
year and is covered with over 50,000 LED lights.
The
Swarovski-crystal star that tops the tree first appeared in 2004 and is nearly
3 meters (10 feet) in diameter. The tree is positioned in front of the central
feature of Rockefeller Center: the Comcast Building.
The Vatican Christmas Tree, also called the Saint Peter’s Square Christmas
Tree, is the decorated tree that is erected annually in the Saint
Peter’s Square directly in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican
City.
Pope
John Paul II first introduced a Christmas tree in Saint Peter’s Square in 1982,
and since then various European countries have donated one every year.
The 20-meter (65-foot) tall tree at Galeries Lafayette a luxury shopping paradise in
Paris is the
tallest indoor Christmas tree in the world. It’s made of
metal and stands under the gallery’s beautiful dome, where each year it’s
dressed with new decorations.
The most expensively dressed Christmas tree was
valued at 41,329,531 AED ($11,026,900 US; £6,975,880), and was erected and
displayed by the Emirates Palace (UAE) in Abu Dhabi, UAE, from 16 to 29
December 2010. The tree was covered in 181 items of jewelry and stood 13.1 m
(43.2 ft) high.
The
world’s tallest cut Christmas tree was a 67.36 meters (221
feet) Douglas
fir erected and decorated at Northgate Shopping Center,
Seattle, Washington, USA, in December 1950.
Each year many families visit
their local Christmas tree farm to chop down their annual tree. We bet they
could have used record holder Erin Lavoie (USA) who completed the Most
Christmas trees chopped in two minutes!
On
the set of Guinness World Records: Die GroBten Weltrekorde in Germany, the
tree-chopping extraordinaire axed down an incredible 27 trees in 2008.
Approximately 25-30
million real Christmas trees are sold each year in the United States.
Almost all of these come from Christmas tree farms.
Approximately 350
million Christmas trees growing on about 15,000 Christmas tree farms in the
United States.
President Franklin Pierce is said to have
had the first indoor Christmas tree at the White House during the 1850’s,
variously reported as 1853 or 1856.
President Theodore Roosevelt, an
avowed environmentalist, banned Christmas trees from the White House during his
presidency. The president was against real Christmas trees because he feared
that Christmas trees would lead to deforestation.
In the 1930’s, artificial
trees made of brush bristles were developed in the United
States, and the 1950’s and 1960’s saw the mass production of aluminum and PVC
plastic trees.
Artificial
trees gained significant popularity, particularly in countries where fresh
trees were hard to procure.
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