December 21, 2007

• Yuletide Traditions: Christmas Trees Decorations

  The History of Christmas Tree Ornaments

  

  Even as bows of holly, ivy, and mistletoe were used in Victorian England to decorate walls and mantels, the Germans decorated tall green fir trees with colored paper, fruits and sweets. It is from Germany that many of our Yuletide customs spread. In the mid 16th century, German towns would set up Christmas markets, providing everything a family might need for their celebrations. Bakers would make shaped gingerbread and wax ornaments. A visitor to Strasbourg in 1601 described a tree decorated with “wafers and golden sugar-twists (Barley-sugar) and colorful paper flowers. The early Christmas trees were symbolic of the Paradise Tree in the Garden of Eden, and the foods used to decorate it were symbols of Plenty. The flowers were originally only red (for Knowledge) and White (for Innocence). Later little gift items were hung on the tree… dolls, books, fiddles, drums, work boxes, needle cases, ribbons, and lace. Part of the German tradition of taking down the tree on January 6th was the “Plündern,” during which the children raid the tree of cookies and sugar plums.

  An early version of a “tree” with candles was the “lichtstock,” a wooden pyramid trimmed with green sprigs and candles, but the traditional German Christmas trees have always been the silver fir and the balsam. They are grown in such a way to make candle usage on the branches safe. The poet Goethe first saw a Christmas tree in 1765 in Leipzig. His description of a Christmas celebration in “Die Leiden des Jungen Werther” (“The Sorrows of Young Werther”) in 1774 is the earliest depictions of a candle-lit tree, and it may have helped spread the custom. Candles on the tree replaced bon-fires as a symbol for the returning sun, though in some areas, old trees are still brought to a public place and burnt in a big bon-fire. Tinsel was invented in Germany around 1610. Though silver was durable, it quickly tarnished by candlelight. Mixtures of lead and tin were tried, but proved to be too delicate for use, so real silver was used for tinsel right up to the mid-20th century. The Rauschgoldengel, literally the “Tingled-angel,” was introduced in the 1850s from the Thuringian Christmas markets. Also in the 1850s, fancy shaped glass bead garlands for the trees and short garlands made from necklace ‘bugles’ and beads were popular decorations.

  Queen Victoria often visited relatives in the German town of Coburg, and while there, she fell in love with the young Prince Albert. After their marriage, they returned to England to raise their family. The first Christmas tree that Price Albert provided his family, decorated in the finest of hand blown glass ornaments, was admired by all. From this tree, other Christmas tree decorations were copied. By the 1870′s, glass ornaments were being imported into Britain from Lauscha in Thuringia. Just as the size of the tree became a status symbol, so to were the glass ornaments on the tree. A F.W. Woolworth brought the glass ornament tradition to the United States around 1880, and they were quickly followed by American patents for electric lights (1882) and metal ornament hooks (1892). Planned trees became fashionable, which might mean a simple color theme or a complex Oriental or Egyptian tree. With the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 however, fine trees soon fell out of fashion until the 1930′s.

  

  In America, decorations were not easy to find in the shanty towns of the West, so just as when the tradition began, people made their own. Tin was pierced so that light could shine through and create patterns. Old magazines with pictures to cut out, rolls of Cotton Wool, and tinsel were much sought after commodities at the general store. The Paper Putz, or Christmas village, was a popular feature under the tree, especially in the Moravian Deutsch communities of  Pennsylvania. I’ve seen these. They are lovely. Sometimes there is even a little train going around the whole scene.

  

  Between the 1870′s and 1930′s, Germans made the finest molds for ornaments, with nearly 5,000 different molds at the time. Though there were over one hundred small cottage glass blowing workshops in Europe at the turn of the century, it was from Lauscha, a small town nested in the Thuringian mountains, that most ornaments came. After the war however, glass ornament production declined. Many of the craftsmen left for West Germany. Translucent plastic lock together shapes, honeycomb paper angels, glow-in the-dark icicles, and Polish glass balls and birds became popular decorations. As quantity rather than quality, became the Communist philosophy, many antique Christmas decoration molds were left to collect dust or were lost or destroyed. In the 1960′s, when it was fashionable to have an Aluminum tree and all the same shape and color ornaments, many of the old glass ornaments were thrown away.

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