Todd A Phillips writes:

Another year has passed, once again time escapes our grasp and it's strange to see it go with everything that has arisen. On a positive note, I'd like to finish my last article of 2021, and write about the origins of our beloved Christmas trees.

During October I went into details of how far back Halloween started, to how it progressed to the current celebrations we have today. Coincidentally, our festive trees also have their own foundations in history.

Traditionally, as always with these articles let's start from the beginning. "Once upon a trunk…" Sorry couldn't help it. Seriously though, before we had the event of "Christmas" the Christian celebration, Evergreens were believed to keep out unwanted spirits and illnesses. During December, we have our shortest day and the longest night of the year, named the winter solstice.

There have been many cultures throughout the ages that would see this time as a sign of their deity's becoming weak or sick. For example, the Romans celebrated it with a festival called Saturnalia, based on their god Saturn. Basically a massive party of food, wine, music and giving each other gifts. Sound familiar?

Fun fact; with the exception of Earth, within our solar system, our planets are named after Roman or Greek gods. Venus being the only one named after a female.

The tradition did not start here

Skipping forward a few centuries, it wasn't the Brits who came up with the idea of putting up the Christmas tree as we now know it. During the 16th Century dedicated German Christians would be harvesting these back to their homes. According to History.com and other sources. Popular belief claims that "Martin Luther a 16th Century Protestant Reformer first added lighted Candles to a tree". Following on from this, came the tradition of adding items to our trees such as lights and other decorations.

During the 19th century Germans had migrated to the Americas, and carried over the tradition of setting up Christmas trees in their homes. The population of the Christmas tree in Britain, was brought forward by Prince Albert and Queen Victoria in 1840. However, Queen Charlotte who was the wife of George the III set up the first known English Christmas tree in Windsor in 1800.

Since 1947 Norway dedicates one of its trees to Trafalgar Square. Reason being that after the Nazi's occupied Norway in WW2, the king fled to the United Kingdom. As gratitude, the tree was introduced. This has been the tradition every year since.

Nordmann Fir is now the most commonly used Christmas tree used in the UK, during the festive season.

Millions of trees

It's estimated around 6-8 million are sold each year. According to British

Christmas Tree Growers Association "BCTGA estimate about 80% of the trees sold are Nordmann Fir, around 10-15% Norway Spruce, and the remainder are made up from the other varieties." Typically, these need a decade or even slightly more to grow to 6-7ft high, each tree is then cared for especially in order for these to be sold to customers. So how will we celebrate this Christmas? You have plenty of traditions in history to choose from why not introduce some into your homes and try something a little different! In closing, I'd like to share my gratitude with you all for reading these articles. With this being over a year now since I started. I'd like to additionally wish you all a Merry Christmas/Saturnalia to you all!

References:

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/christmas-greenery-history/

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/first-christmas-tree

https://www.visitnorway.com/typically-norwegian/christmas/the-trafalgar-square-christm

as-tree/