Oh, Christmas Pyramid, How Lovely Are Thy Angles (History of Christmas Trees)

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Ever hear of a "Christmas pyramid"? 

It is one of the forerunners of today's Christmas tree. In the Encyclopedia of Christmas, Tanya Gulevich described it as "a triangular or pyramidal structure made up of shelves of unequal lengths joined along their outside edges by supporting posts or poles." The shelves held candles and all manner of decorations, including evergreen boughs. A Nativity scene often stood in the longest shelf at the bottom, while a pine cone or star would crown the top.

The Germans made the first Christmas pyramids, which they hung from their ceilings. The custom caught on elsewhere in central Europe, in Italy and in England, and it came with German immigrants to America in the 1700s. Some pyramids were quite elaborate, with delicate propellers on the upper layers that caught the heat rising from candles below. The propellers spun an axis that rotated layers of ornaments. But Christmas trees as we know them were competing with the pyramids in Germany as early as the 1600s. By the 1800s, the Christmas pyramid was well on its way out.

As for actual trees, there was the ancient custom of the Yule tree. Germans and Scandinavians would bring live evergreen trees into their houses in winters past, as a reminder of the eternal renewal of nature. "Such a tree was not decorated," wrote Daniel J. Foley in The Christmas Tree. "It merely grew as something green" (somewhat like our modern houseplants). In areas where this custom has survived, it is common to find a Yule tree alongside a fully decorated Christmas tree.

The ancient Roman custom of decorating homes with greenery during Kalends may have sparked the Yule tree custom. What is more, "Christmas presents may have their origins in pagan Rome's gift-giving feast of Kalends, " added Joe Woodard ("The Enduring Power of Saint Nicholas," Alberta Report, Dec. 18, 1995). During their raucous Saturnalia festival (Dec. 17-24), the Romans hung candles from trees to welcome the god of agriculture, Saturn, back from exile.

We may thank Pope Gregory I (circa 540-604 A.D.) for allowing evergreens (as well as mistletoe, holly and candles) as part of the Christmas festivities, despite their pagan associations. Gregory felt that Christianity would be more welcoming to converts if some customs from the older religions survived in the Church's festival days.

Modern Christmas trees may descend most directly from the paradise trees of medieval mystery and miracle plays. These dramas illustrated biblical events and saints' lives, and the big prop for the paradise play (performed on Christmas Eve) was a fir tree decorated with apples. Some scholars believe that the custom of adorning paradise trees continued even after mystery plays ceased to be performed.

Christmas tree lights may have come from the Jewish winter festival of Hanukkah, when candles are lit progressively over eight nights. According to The Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend,  this "correspondence ... is probably incidental," however, because the use of lights is part of winter solstice festivals the world over.

True Christmas trees were appearing in Germany by the 1400s, decorated with cookies, fruits and nuts. The first historical record is a decree from Alsace in 1561, proclaiming a limit of one tree per family. By the early 1600s, some German clerics were complaining that the Christmas trees conflicted with the religious nature of the holiday.

Gulevich dismissed the old story that Hessian mercenaries bedecked the first Christmas trees in North America during the Revolutionary War. It is much more likely that German immigrants introduced the custom. Christmas trees were still such an oddity to Americans in the early 1800s that some paid to see them on display. In 1845, however, the book, Kriss Kringle's Christmas Tree  had American kids clamoring for trees of their own (at first, they were small items, for display on a table top). One-fifth of households in the United States had Christmas trees by 1900. This figure reached 85 percent by the mid-1990s.

Though Franklin Pierce was the first president to set up a Christmas tree in the White House in 1856, it was Woodrow Wilson who led the first national Christmas tree ceremony at the Capitol Building in 1913. Calvin Coolidge brought the event to the White House, and in 1923 he presided over the nation's first tree-lighting ceremony.


• RELATED CHRISTMAS STORIES:

                          Beware the Twelve Days of Christmas!                   

                          It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Saturnalia, Everywhere I Go

                         Christmas Had Nothing to Do with It -- The Secular Roots of Carols