A Brief History of Christmas Tree Design

A Brief History of Christmas Tree Design By: Eliza Thompson

From ancient Egypt to Hollywood (or, you know, Tinseltown), a look back at the historical roots of Christmas trees.

Perhaps second only to Santa Claus, Christmas trees are the most indelible secular symbol of the holiday. While the elaborate—and often enormous— trees of today might imply that yuletide, greenery is just another symptom of the commercialization of the holiday, the truth is that Christmas trees can trace their roots back to ancient times.

Modern Christmas trees are associated with December 25th and all its celebrations—religious or otherwise—but the presence of evergreen plants in winter decor has a more pagan origin. In ancient Egypt, for example, worshipers of the sun god Ra placed green palm fronds in their homes after the winter solstice to celebrate the return of sunnier days after the long darkness of fall.

The Romans also held a December festival near the date of the solstice: Saturnalia, dedicated to the god Saturn. One of the celebration’s many traditions included decorating the home with evergreen boughs, which symbolized eternal life and the hope for a sunnier, bountiful new year. 

In Northern Europe, Germanic tribes celebrated Yule in the month of December, starting several traditions that trickled down in some form or another: the Yule log, carolling, and evergreen decor.

The Christmas tree as we know it, however, only dates back to the 16th century or so. Martin Luther is often credited as one of the first people to decorate an evergreen with lit candles after he noticed how pretty the stars looked twinkling through the branches.

That story may be apocryphal, but it’s true that Germans were the earliest European adopters of the Tannenbaum—they did, after all, write the song about it.

Victorian Beginnings

The Christmas tree arrived in America in the 1800s thanks to German immigrants who brought their holiday traditions with them. These early trees were typically decorated with edible snacks like marzipan cookies, nuts, candy, and fruit.

While these trees sound delicious, other Americans—some descendants of the religious Puritans—were initially sceptical of the tradition, deciding it was a bit too pagan for their taste.

Enter Queen Victoria. Like many modern Americans, mid-19th century citizens were absolutely obsessed with the royals, despite the fact that the country fought in a war for independence from Britain less than seventy-five years earlier.

Victoria was especially popular, with soaps, hats, hairbrushes, and other souvenirs popping up all over the county to commemorate her 1838 coronation. So, when she and Prince Albert got a Christmas tree for Windsor Castle in 1848, everybody had to have one.

Victorian trees, like Martin Luther’s legendary tannenbaum of yore, were mostly decorated with lit candles, with the addition of homemade ornaments and strings of garland and ribbon. 

The candles, as you might expect, were something of a fire hazard, and there were early reports of skirts set aflame by aggressively lit Christmas trees. (The spread of electricity later in the century helped mitigate this problem, as real candles were replaced with faux ones.)

Early Glow

By the early 1900s, Christmas trees had fully taken off in American homes, but for the most part, they were decorated in much the same way they were during Victoria’s reign—candles or string lights, with homemade ornaments and garlands. As department stores started getting in on the Christmas tree game, store-bought ornaments became more common.