It was often paraded around the town before the play started, as a way of advertising the play. The plays told Bible stories to people who could not read. Christmas Trees as they came to be now started around the late s into the s.
In what's now Germany was the Holy Roman Empire then , the Paradise Tree had more decorations on it sometimes communion wafers, cherries and later pastry decorations of stars, bells, angels, etc. Some early Christmas Trees, across many parts of northern Europe, were cherry or hawthorn plants or a branch of the plant that were put into pots and brought inside so they would hopefully flower at Christmas time. If you couldn't afford a real plant, people made pyramids of woods and they were decorated to look like a tree with paper, apples and candles.
It's possible that the wooden pyramid trees were meant to be like Paradise Trees. Sometimes they were carried around from house to house, rather than being displayed in a home. Some trees or at least small tops of them or branches of fir trees were hung from the ceiling, mainly in some parts of Germany, some Slavic countries and parts of Poland. This might have been to save space or they just looked nice hanging from the rafters! If you have lighting hooks on the ceiling, they would also be an obvious place to hang things from.
The first documented use of a tree at Christmas and New Year celebrations is argued between the cities of Tallinn in Estonia and Riga in Latvia! Both claim that they had the first trees; Tallinn in and Riga in Both trees were put up by the 'Brotherhood of Blackheads' which was an association of local unmarried merchants, ship owners, and foreigners in Livonia what is now Estonia and Latvia. Little is known about either tree apart from that they were put in the town square, were danced around by the Brotherhood of Blackheads and were then set on fire.
This is like the custom of the Yule Log. The word used for the 'tree' could also mean a mast or pole, tree might have been like a 'Paradise Tree' or a tree-shaped wooden candelabra rather than a 'real' tree. In the town square of Riga, the capital of Latvia, there is a plaque which is engraved with "The First New Year's Tree in Riga in ", in eight languages. You can find out more about the Riga Tree from this website: www. A picture from Germany in which shows a tree being paraded through the streets with a man riding a horse behind it.
The man is dressed a bishop, possibly representing St. There's a record of a small tree in Breman, Germany from It is described as a tree decorated with "apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers". It was displayed in a 'guild-house' the meeting place for a society of business men in the city. The first person to bring a Christmas Tree into a house, in the way we know it today, may have been the 16th century German preacher Martin Luther.
A story is told that, one night before Christmas, he was walking through the forest and looked up to see the stars shining through the tree branches. It was so beautiful, that he went home and told his children that it reminded him of Jesus, who left the stars of heaven to come to earth at Christmas.
So he brought a tree into his house and decorated it with candles to represent the stars. Some people say this is the same tree as the 'Riga' tree, but it isn't! The story about Martin Luther seems to date to about and Riga tree originally took place a couple of decades earlier.
The custom of having Christmas trees could well have travelled along the Baltic sea, from Latvia to Germany. In the s and s, the countries which are now Germany and Latvia were them part of two larger empires which were neighbors. Another story says that St. Boniface of Crediton a village in Devon, UK left England in the 8th centuryand traveled to Germany to preach to the pagan German tribes and convert them to Christianity. He is said to have come across a group of pagans about to sacrifice a young boy while worshipping an oak tree in honour of Thor.
In anger, and to stop the sacrifice, St. Boniface cut down the oak tree and, to his amazement, a young fir tree sprang up from the roots of the oak tree. Boniface took this as a sign of the Christian faith and his followers decorated the tree with candles so that St. Boniface could preach to the pagans at night. St Boniface was certainly involved in spreading Christianity in parts of Germany, although the legends of the tree seems to have started several centuries later and they're not mentioned in the early writings about St Boniface.
Haing Trees upside down has also been connected with St. Being upside down it that looked a bit like a cross and so also helped to explain the crucifixion. I love my advent calendar, but jeez, that sounds pretty nice. The continent is so beautiful and diverse in so many ways, and their holiday celebrations are no different. In South Africa , families decorate the windowsills in their home with wool, tinsel, and sparkling cotton to mimic the appearance of snow.
In Ghana , people cover their homes and churches in colourful decorations four full weeks before Christmas Day. Liberia has a beautiful custom of using oil palms as Christmas trees, which are decorated with bells. Nigeria is a very multicultural country, with more than six languages common to the region. Nigerian streets, homes, and churches are covered in elaborate displays of lights, and parades of floats and costumed dancers are common in many regions. Throughout Asia, Christmas varies a lot in terms of its cultural significance.
This is a little ironic, considering the majority of artificial Christmas trees, plastic ornaments, and even Christmas gifts are manufactured in China! In Japan , very few people practise Christianity but Christmas has become an increasingly popular secular holiday. Christmas lights are popular in the streets, but even more popular are the foods that Japanese people associate with the holiday.
Japanese people love to eat fried chicken on Christmas Day, and a special strawberry sponge cake is enjoyed for dessert. In regions of India that celebrate Christmas, stars are the most popular decorations. In the Goa region, people hang star-shaped lanterns from the trees. Indonesia , despite its low population of Christians, loves to celebrate Christmas with elaborate and dramatic Christmas trees made from everything from chicken feathers to edible chocolate!
What then would be expected by this date? This song is itself a good example of the ongoing recreating of traditions throughout history.
The new English lyrics were written to accompany a 16th-century Welsh melody, whose original words made no mention of holly or decorating. The lyrics were almost immediately updated to remove encouragement of heavy drinking. Still relatively new in Britain and the US at this time, though rising in popularity, was the German custom of the decorated Christmas tree, which was first recorded in the Rhineland in the 16th century.
Its decorations were mainly candles and small presents, which were often homemade food and sweets. By the tree might be accompanied by a display of printed Christmas cards bearing images of holly, mistletoe, seasonal food and bells. Newer images included robins and, of course, Father Christmas. Another innovation was the arrival of electric lighting in the s, which made possible the invention of fairy lights. Arguably, the Industrial Revolution, having failed to destroy Christmas, eventually absorbed and expanded it.
Affordable, mass-produced toys, gifts and decorations turned Christmas into the festival we know today and made decorations possible for almost all households, even in big cities where foliage was scarce.
One man who played a major part in creating and spreading affordable versions of decorations was the American entrepreneur and retail mogul, F W Woolworth. His decision to import large quantities of glass baubles and stars, originally produced by family workshops in Germany, did much to spread this new medium. Alongside these came paper garlands and decorative Christmas stockings, as well as painted tin toys. Another idea which started in Germany was tinsel.
This was originally fine, sparkling strips of silver, but was later mass produced—first in cheaper metals, and then plastic.
Today, of course, plastic is widely out of favor.
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