O Christmas Tree! O Christmas Tree!

It is Christmas Eve and most of us have decorated a Christmas tree with lights and colourful knick-knacks. The home decoration with evergreens such as pine, fir and spruce  fount in Temperate and Boreal forests was a habit long before Christianity was introduced. The evergreens were special to people as they remained green all year round and they used to hang boughs over entrances and windows to keep evil spirits away.

In the Northern hemisphere winter solstice (longest night of year) usually occurs on 21^st of December the ancient peoples celebrated the solstice with the evergreens as a reminder that the summer is now coming and green plants will grow. Different cultures celebrated the solstice with evergreens such as the ancient Egyptians worshipping god Ra, the Early Romans the Saturnalia feast, the ancient Celts priests the Durids.

The Christmas tree tradition is credited to the Germans when Christians decorated trees in their houses in the 16^th century.

The popularity of the Christmas tree grew when the popular royals-Queen Victoria and her German Prince were illustrated in the London News around the Christmas tree with their family in 1846.  Since then Christmas trees (Figure 1) became fashionable not only in Europe but also in the American society. It was also noted that the Europeans decorated small trees up to 4ft where as the Americans used to decorate trees from floor to the ceiling (History).

Figure 1: Prince Albert's practice of putting up Christmas trees at Windsor became well known in the 1840s (BBC)

Here is a video of the Christmas tree life in the farm in the U.S. (History).

Happy Holidays !!