Christopher Radko's Heart of Christmas

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The Well-Dressed Christmas Tree With all due respect to Santa, the central icon of the season is the Christmas tree. I can't imagine the holidays without the magic of wonderfully decorated trees, each different, each special. Like the hearth or a dining table, a Christmas tree draws people to it -- and to one another. Our visceral response to evergreens makes me wonder if they have magical properties we have long forgotten. The scents of pine, spruce, and fir trees not only connect us to the natural world, they actually cheer and invigorate us. No wonder aromatherapists use the essential oils of evergreens for their energizing and healing properties. A Christmas tree serves as a diary of a family's history: Each ornament records a moment in the lives of its members. As you unwrap your ornaments you might recall that your angel tree topper was a gift from a dear friend. The little glass birds from the Paris flea market remind you of a vacation before a decade ago. You think of your favorite great-aunt when you open the vintage glass icicles she gave you, still in their original cardboard box. And so it goes, with trinkets marking the births of children and their own clumsily crafted ornaments made of dough and paper recording the passage of years. All these fragments of your life hang on the tree and shine back at you, reminding you of who you are as well as the meaning of the holiday. That's why I think of a Christmas tree as having the same evocative qualities as a photo album or a personal art gallery. Immigrant Influences Ubiquitous as it is today, the idea of bringing a fresh-cut tree inside and covering it with trinkets was not in general practice in this country until the middle of the nineteenth century. The practice of decorating a Christmas tree originated in Germany (see "Ancient Origins" on page 17), and it was Germany that played a major role in shaping our Christmas customs. We don't know definitively where and when the first decorated Christmas trees appeared in our country; we do know that the charming custom of the Tannenbaum came to our shores with people of German birth. Pennsylvania German settlers are said to have decorated community trees as early as 1747, and the custom of the family tree may have originated with the Moravians of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the very early 1800s. Others claim that Hessian soldiers stationed at Trenton, New Jersey, in 1776 were the first in this country to cut down firs and decorate them. But not all colonial Americans celebrated Christmas. The Puritans of Massachusetts banned its observance. Many Northerners continued to consider Christmas celebrations as rowdy and sinful, instead regarding Thanksgiving as the true American holiday. On the other hand, Southerners participated in all-out Christmas celebrations as a key part of the social season. It is not surprising that the first state to make Christmas a legal holiday was Alabama in 1836, followed by Louisiana and Arkansas in 1938. The first decorated Christmas tree in the White House appeared in 1856 during the administration of President Franklin Pierce. After the Civil War, the celebration of Christmas was finally well established throughout the country, and the Christmas tree was central to its observance. Jewelry for the Tree Commercially made ornaments of silver and gilt foil and cardboard began appearing in the United States in the 1870s. By the 1880s, printed figures embossed on paper became popular along with the new invention of spun-glass angel hair. But it was the invention of glass ornaments that was to transform the look of Christmas trees around the world. The small town of Lauscha in the Thuringian Forest east of Nuremberg, Germany, had long been known for its glassblowers. These skilled craftsmen produced tiny glass beads for jewelry and dressmaking. Early in the nineteenth century, the glassblowers found they could blo