History of the Christmas tree

To celebrate Christmas trees are used and are mentioned in the early 1600's in Germany and neighbouring countries. During this time the families set up the trees in a prominent location in their home and would decorate them with small toys, coloured paper, food, and occasionally candles. The people then brought these traditions, to other countries, as they moved or immigrated to other countries.

Over the years different things were being used to decorate the Christmas trees. As we moved into 1900’s, some trees had were being decorated in strings of popcorn, candy in all shapes and sizes homemade cards and pictures, cotton to look like snow, and occasionally, fancy store made glass balls and hand blown glass figurines. When candles were used, they often caused devastating fires. So this started many different types of candleholders to be made to try and prevent tree fires. It was three years after Thomas Edison first made his mass public demonstration of electric lights back in 1879 that electric Christmas tree lights were used. These early Christmas tree lights were handmade and quite expensive.

As we move into the modern world of today, the decorations for the Christmas trees are found in different sizes, shape and colour and they decorate millions of Christmas trees around the world.