RedSea4u

The Story of the Christmas Tree




There are several stories about the origin of the Christmas tree.


The first Christmas tree was cut down by a man called Martin Luther. He was walking through a forest of pine trees and looked up to see the moon shining through the branches. He thought that it looked so lovely he cut it down, took it indoors and put candles all round it.



Another legend links it to Saint Boniface who had gone to Germany to teach them about Jesus. He was walking through some woods when he came upon a gathering of people with lighted candles who were just about to make an offering to a pagan god by sacrificing a small boy already tied to an oak tree. Saint Boniface stopped them, got them to put their candles on a nearby spruce tree, and proceeded, by the candle light, to teach them about a loving God and the teachings of his son, Jesus.
The third version links back to a celebration of Adam and Eve day on the 24th December, when a tree known as the Paradise tree was decorated with apples and fruit and the story of Adam and Eve was acted out.
It was certainly Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband who made the Christmas tree popular in England. He decorated one in the German custom for his children and wrote to his father in 1841
Today I have two children of my own...{they} are full of happy wonder at the German Christmas tree and its radiant candles.


Christmas Tree Decorations

Originally Christmas decorations were made up of evergreens, berries and candles. Now a huge industry has been built around the subject providing millions of decorations in brilliant colours made of shiny paper, glass, plastic and many other things. Houses are festooned in streamers of every description and trees have all sorts of decorations hung from their branches as well as lights which are very often designed to look like candles. Early decorations which were hung from branches of Christmas trees were intricately carved and painted wooden items.

The Legend of Tinsel
There was a lady with lots of children. Her husband had died and life was difficult. The lady worked all hours to provide for her family, there was no money for extras.

Although she was poor the lady was determined that Christmas would be a lovely time for her children. She worked late each night to make little gifts for them all.

Just before Christmas she prepared a little tree and hid it ready to surprise her family on Christmas day. During the night spiders visited the tree and spread their webs all over it.

The Christ child saw the tree and knew that the lady would be upset to see it looking so dirty. He turned all of the webs to shining silver.

On Christmas morning the woman was overjoyed to see it looking more lovely than she had imagined.

I particularly like the last one

Reading that has got me feeling all christmassy!

You know when it's Christmas when you smell the tinsel, i love it sniff sniff!

I spent more than £300 last year changing all my decorations, i went for a snowy, ice look, it looked amazing. I then moved here and have not brought them over yet so what a waste that was!

I would like to have white sparkly lights, with wooden traditional decorations!

Do you remember the candle light's? My Nanna used to have them on her's!

When i was in Amsterdam the other year, there was a black tree with lime green baubles on it, sounds waful but it looked really good.

When the kids were small I would always buy a real Pine tree, the smell was wonderful, but I always got a rollocking off Mrs H when all the needles started falling off.

And when the tree got pulled out through the house after christmas, used to take ages getting them out of the carpet.

My dad always got a tree big enough to go up into the bedroom, he used to chop the best part out of it.

We had a real christmas tree here a few years back. When I say real - it was more like a potted fir tree - but it did the job! In years past we used to have Basil the Yukka dressed up in his finest. Sadly Basil died of rot but now Son of Basil is doing a sterling effort in his place!
Last year we actually got round to buying a real fake one! It really was a bargain! little iddy biddy ones started at 5 LE - ours is about 3 ft and was about 25 LE. They had monster ones too - and all the fibre optic ones. I hunted for ages for plain white lights that wink. Got tons of tinsel, baubels and a can of fake snow.

Nothing like having a real 'fake' tree Goddess I have literally hundreds of lights Mrs H goes spare I just cannot resist a new set or two when I see them A couple of years back I bought a tree with lights built into it from B & Q, bloody thing nearly killed me. I had switched it on and was smoothing out a few branches as you do, when bang it knocked me across the room. I found a bulb with no cap on it and just the prongs sticking out, how's that for health and safety, should never have happened. By the way according to B & Q it was not their fault.

Goddess wrote:We had a real christmas tree here a few years back. When I say real - it was more like a potted fir tree - but it did the job! In years past we used to have Basil the Yukka dressed up in his finest. Sadly Basil died of rot but now Son of Basil is doing a sterling effort in his place!
Last year we actually got round to buying a real fake one! It really was a bargain! little iddy biddy ones started at 5 LE - ours is about 3 ft and was about 25 LE. They had monster ones too - and all the fibre optic ones. I hunted for ages for plain white lights that wink. Got tons of tinsel, baubels and a can of fake snow.

Wow Goddess. You are hard core. I changed to a fake tree several years ago as the allergies kicked in. Now the the girls are on their own, I'm not too big on having a tree. Not sure why.

Christmas trees really have nothing to do with the Christ child but are nice. I thought they came from Germany when, in the dead of winter, people needed a little bit of greenery to cheer them up. I thought that is where the "hanging of the green" came from also.