The History of Christmas Trees

The evergreen fir tree has traditionally been used to celebrate winter festivals (pagan and Christian) for thousands of years.Pagans used branches of it to decorate their homes during the winter solstice, as it made them think of the spring to come.The Romans used Fir Trees to decorate their temples at the festival of Saturnalia.Christians use it as a sign of everlasting life with God.Nobody is really sure when Fir trees were first used as Christmas trees.It probably started about began 1000 years ago in Northern Europe.Many early Christmas Trees seem to have been hung upside down from the ceiling using chains (hung from chandeliers lighting hooks).Other early Christmas Trees, across many part 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 could not afford a real plant, people made pyramids of woods and they were decorated to look like a tree with paper, apples and candles.Sometimes there were carried around from house to house, rather than being displayed in a home.It is possible that the wooden pyramid trees were meant to be like Paradise Trees.These were used in medieval German Mystery or Miracle Plays that were acted out in front of Churches on Christmas Eve.In early church calendars of saints, 24th December was Adam and Eve day.The Paradise Tree represented the Garden of Eden.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.