Where did the tradition of chopping down an evergreen to decorate it with tinsel and lights originate?
The myth goes that Saint Boniface, an English missionary sent to Germany in 732 CE to convert the pagans to Christianity, came across a sacrifice taking place in front of an oak tree. According to TIME and Encyclopedia Britannica, Boniface was so horrified by these blasphemous acts that he cut down the oak tree right in front of them, and the legend goes that a fir tree spontaneously grew there.
Regardless of the truth of this myth, Encyclopedia Britannica explains that the ritual started in what is now Germany during the Middle Ages. On December 24th, evergreen trees were displayed and decorated with fruits in celebration of the feast day of Adam and Eve—originally called ‘paradise trees,’ these evergreens were meant to represent the Garden of Eden. It is said that Martin Luther, figurehead of the Protestant Reformation, was the first to decorate a tree with lights. The first evergreen market popped up in the 17th century in Alsace, where they were sold as Weihnachtsbaum (German for pine tree—try saying that ten times fast!) Judith Flanders writes in her book Christmas: A Biography of a tree in Strasbourg which was decorated with sweets, roses, and apples in 1605, the first recorded instance of an evergreen tree kept inside and decorated.
It was then German-born Prince Albert and his wife Queen Victoria who familiarized the British with the idea, and in 1848, “an illustration of the royal family around a decorated tree appeared in a London newspaper.”
Interestingly, Encyclopedia Britannica also reports that the tradition was not accepted by the masses in the United States when German settlers first introduced it. In fact, Christmas as a holiday was rejected by some Puritan communities because of its relation to paganism. Christmas didn’t gain traction in the US until the early 19th century, and the first trees appeared in the 1830s.
Because of the obvious environmental impacts of the tradition, changes were made to the original concept. It was in Germany first that, as Amy Tikkanen writes, alternatives to evergreen trees were explored. Some trees were constructed out of goose feathers, and in the 1930s, a manufacturer of toilet bowl brushes is said to have constructed a tree out of surplus material. The idea caught on, and today, plastic trees or otherwise artificial decorations are used more often than real trees; 82 percent of trees in 2018 were artificial, TIME reports.
The Christmas tree has come a long way—from evergreens to toilet brushes to the modern plastic conifers we decorate today—and in that time, it has established itself as the ultimate symbol of the Christian holiday season.