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Christmas Trees 



THE TRADITION 



ARTHUR M. SOWDER 



TRIMMED Christmas trees were 

 first used in the United States ap- 

 parently during the American Revolu- 

 tion, when Hessian soldiers softened 

 their homesickness with them. In a de- 

 scription of Christmas festivities at 

 Fort Dearborn, 111., in 1804 mention 

 is made of a Christmas tree. 



The idea and the tradition spread 

 widely through the young land: We 

 read that people in Cambridge, Mass., 

 put up Christmas trees in 1832; in 

 Philadelphia, 2 years later; Cincinnati, 

 in 1835; Rochester, N. Y., 1840; Rich- 

 mond and Williamsburg, in Virginia, 

 1846; Wooster, Ohio, 1847; and Cleve- 

 land, 1851. 



At first, the trimmings, if any, con- 

 sisted mostly of small tufts of cotton 

 and strings of popcorn and cranberries. 

 Other decorations were flowers, repli- 

 cas of foodstuffs, paper ornamentSj 

 and the like no factory-made orna- 



The illustration above, drawn from a photo- 

 graph, shows an aspect of the Christmas- 

 tree harvest. 



ments, tinsel, electric lights, or baubles. 



Some historians trace the custom of 

 lighting the Christmas tree to Martin 

 Luther ( 1483-1546) . The story is told 

 that he was strolling through the coun- 

 tryside alone one Christmas Eve under 

 a brilliant starlit sky, and his thoughts 

 turned to the nativity of the Christ 

 Child. He was awed by the beauty of 

 the heavens and the wintry landscape : 

 The blue light on the low hills outside 

 Weimar, and on the evergreens, the 

 snow flakes sparkling in the moonlight. 

 Returning home, he told his family 

 about it and attempted to reproduce 

 the glory of the outdoors. To a small 

 evergreen tree he attached some lighted 

 candles so as to portray the reflection 

 of the starry heaven. 



Apparently candles did not come 

 into wide use at once. Mention of the 

 Christmas-tree custom in Strasbourg 

 a century later did not include lights. 

 In fact, at first, the use of lights on a 

 tree was considered ridiculous and re- 

 ferred to as "child's play." For two 

 centuries following Luther, the Christ- 



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