History & Interesting Facts
Blue Spruce is the state tree of Colorado and
Utah!
Christmas
trees are grown in all 50 states including Hawaii and Alaska.
100,000 people are employed in the
Christmas tree industry.
Blue Spruce is the most common
blue-foliaged evergreen tree in landscapes.
The decorated Christmas tree can be
traced back to the ancient Romans who during their winter festival
decorated trees with small pieces of metal during Saturnalia, a winter
festival in honor of Saturnus, the god of agriculture.
During the middle ages an evergreen,
the Paradise tree, was decorated with apples as a symbol of the feast of
Adam and Eve held on December 24th.
Christmas trees were sold in Alsace,
France
in 1531. The trees were sold at local markets and set up in homes
undecorated. In Alsace there was an rule that no person "shall have for Christmas more than one bush of more
than eight shoe lengths."
Sixteenth century folklore credited
Martin Luther as being the first to decorate an indoor tree. After a
walk through a forest of evergreens with shining stars overhead, Luther
tried to describe the experience to his family and showed them by
bringing a tree into their home and decorating it with candles. Some
historians state that the first evidence of a lighted tree appeared more
than a century after Martin Luther's death in 1546.
The oldest record of a decorated
Christmas tree came from a 1605 diary found in Strasburg, France
(Germany in 1605). The tree was decorated with paper roses, apples and
candies.
The first record of Christmas trees
in America was for children in the German Moravian Church's settlement
in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Christmas 1747. Actual trees were not
decorated, but wooden pyramids covered with evergreen branches were
decorated with candles.
The custom of the Christmas tree was
introduced in the United States during the War of Independence by
Hessian troops. An early account tells of a Christmas tree set up by
American soldiers at Fort Dearborn, Illinois, the site of Chicago, in
1804. Most other early accounts in the United States were among the
German settlers in eastern Pennsylvania.
Charles Minnegrode introduced the
custom of decorating trees in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1842.
By 1850, the Christmas tree had
become fashionable in the eastern states. Until this time, it had been
considered a quaint foreign custom.
Mark Carr brought trees from the
Catskills to the streets of New York in 1851, and opened the first
retail Christmas tree lot in the United States.
Franklin Pierce was the first
president to introduce the Christmas tree to the White House in 1856 for
a group of Washington Sunday School children.
The first
national Christmas Tree was lighted in the year 1923 on the White House
lawn by President Calvin Coolidge.
History facts found at: mrchristmastree.com