It’s difficult to get good photos of Christmas trees without fancy lenses, but if you know how to slow down the shutter speed, you can do a pretty good job.
TIPS FOR PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR TREE
Every year since our children were small, we’ve spent an evening driving around and enjoying the lights. The houses are so lovely. Some people are extreme in their decorating, but my favorite part is still seeing that lighted tree in the front window.
Over the holidays I usually have a chance to see several of our friends’ homes and trees, and I never get tired of the experience.
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| DICKENS VILLAGE TREE |
Late in the Middle Ages, Germans and Scandinavians placed evergreen trees inside their homes or just outside their doors to show their hope in the forthcoming spring. Records have it that the first Christmas tree can be traced to France in 1521, though the Germans are most often credited with its origin. (OTannenbaum) The first trees were decorated with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers for the pleasure of the wealthy people’s children.
George Washington didn’t have a Christmas tree. Many colonial religions banned celebrations, claiming that they were tied to pagan traditions. The New England Puritans passed a law that punished anyone who observed the holiday with a five-shilling fine. The Quakers treated Christmas Day as any other day of the year.
The Presbyterians didn’t have formal services until they noticed that their members were heading to the English church to attend theirs! This sparked the Presbyterian Church to start their own.
It was the Anglicans, Roman Catholics and Lutherans who introduced Christmas celebrations to colonial America. December 25th actually began a season of festivities that lasted until January 6th–the Twelve days of Christmas. January 6th was called Twelfth Day, and colonists found it was the perfect occasion for balls, parties and other festivals.
Legend has it that one crisp Christmas Eve around 1500, Martin Luther was walking through snow-covered woods and was struck by the beauty of a group of evergreens. Their branches, dusted with snow, shimmered in the moonlight. When he got home, he set up a little fir tree indoors so he could share this story with his children. He decorated it with candles, which he lighted in honor of Christ’s birth.
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| CONNIE COOPER'S TREE |
In the early 19th century, decorating a tree became popular among the nobility and spread to royal courts as far as Russia. Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg introduced the Christmas tree to Vienna in 1816, and the custom spread across Austria.
In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the delighted 13-year-old princess who later became England’s Queen Victoria wrote, “After dinner…we then went into the drawing-room near the dining room…There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments, all the presents being placed round the trees.”
A young Victoria often visited Germany and most likely picked up the customs she enjoyed. A woodcut of the royal family with their Christmas tree at Osborne House, initially published in the Illustrated London News of December 1848, was copied in the United States at Christmas in 1850. Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at court immediately became fashionable–not only in Britain, but with the fashion-conscious east coast American society.
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| CARDBOARD VILLAGE |
A German immigrant living in Ohio was the first to decorate a tree with candy canes. In 1847, Imgard cut a blue spruce tree from a woods outside town, had the Wooster village tinsmith construct a star, and placed the tree in his house, decorating it with paper ornaments and candy canes. The canes were all white with no red stripes.
Ornaments were made by hand during those early years. Young ladies spent hours quilting snowflakes and stars, sewing little pouches for secret gifts and paper baskets with sugared almonds in them. Popcorn and cranberries were strung on thread and draped as garland. Tin was pierced to create lights and lanterns to hold candles, which glowed through the holes. People hunted the general stores for old magazines with pictures, rolls of cotton wool and tinsel, which was occasionally sent from Germany or brought in from the eastern states. Small toys were placed on the branches. Most of the trees at this time were small and sat on a tabletop. They weren’t the six and seven foot trees we think of today when we think of Christmas trees.
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| FEATHER TREE |
Some believe the Christmas tree tradition most likely came to the United States with Hessian troops during the American Revolution, or with German immigrants to Pennsylvania and Ohio. Most resources site Germans as some of the first to decorate Christmas trees. But the custom spread slowly. The Puritans banned Christmas in New England. Even as late as 1851, a Cleveland minister nearly lost his job because he allowed a tree in his church.
The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when a Catskill farmer by the name of Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900 one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and twenty years later the custom was nearly universal.
In 1880 England, Christmas trees became a glorious hotchpotch of everything one could cram on and grew to floor-standing trees. They were still a status symbol, the more affluent the family, the larger the tree.
The High Victorian of the 1890’s was a child’s joy to behold! It stood as tall as the room, and was crammed with glitter and tinsel and toys galore. Even the middle classes managed to over decorate their trees. It was a case of anything goes. Everything that could possibly go on a tree went onto it. Kind of like my philosophy: More is more.
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| ALUMINUM TREE |
The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when Catskill farmer Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900, one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and 20 years later, the custom was nearly universal.
Christmas tree farms sprang up during the depression. Nurserymen couldn’t sell their evergreens for landscaping, so they cut them for Christmas trees. Cultivated trees were preferred because they have a more symmetrical shape then wild ones. A F.W. Woolworth brought the glass ornament tradition from Germany to the United States in 1890. I love vintage ornaments, how about you?
Do you have memories of Christmas trees from your youth? Remember tinsel trees, those aluminum lovelies with the turnwheel light that made it change colors? My grandma had one of those. I inherited a few of her decorations: A set of cardboard houses crusted with glitter that have tissue paper windows and a set of Santa and reindeer that were among the first products made from plastic.
Is your tree up yet? Send me a photo!
SaintJohn@aol.com
If you don’t have a copy of Cowboy Creek Christmas yet, order a copy so you can read it sitting by the tree, sipping hot cocoa.
About Cowboy Creek Christmas
Mistletoe Reunion by Cheryl St.John
When Marlys Boyd moves West hoping to find acceptance for her doctoring skills, she's surprised to find her former fiancé, Sam Mason, running the local newspaper. And with the ladies in town determined to make a match of the doctor and the single father, she's not sure she can resist building the family they once dreamed of.
Mistletoe Bride by Sherri Shackelford
Pregnant by a man who betrayed her trust, a mail-order marriage is Beatrix Haas's only hope. But when she arrives in Cowboy Creek and learns her intended groom has died, she needs a new daddy for the baby that's coming right away. Blacksmith Colton Werner offers the mother and child the protection of his name, but can their marriage of convenience ever lead to true love?
I just love your Dickens Village "Tree." What a fabulous idea!
ReplyDeleteI know, I really want to do one.
DeleteI purchased Cowboy Creek Christmas and loved it!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Lori! xoxo
DeleteThe Dickens Village tree is my favorite. What a fun way to display a Christmas village.
ReplyDelete