101 Amazing Facts about Christmas by Jack Goldstein

Author:Jack Goldstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: christmas, yule, fact, omg, noel, xmas, santa, reindeer, father christmas, snow, white christmas, eggnog, carols, mistletoe, turkey, Jesus, cranberry, tree, spruce, roast, silent night
ISBN: 9781785380662
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2014-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Christmas Trees

Evergreen trees were used to celebrate the turning of winter well before being associated with Christmas.

The first documented reference to a dedicated Christmas tree with decorations as we would recognise them today refers to one in Riga (in Latvia) in 1510 AD.

Although firs, pines and spruces are the most common Christmas trees today, in the past others such as hawthorn and even cherry trees have been used.

Electric lights for Christmas trees were proposed by Edward Johnson, an assistant to Thomas Edison, in 1882. By 1890 they were being mass produced.

The first string of lights as we would recognise today was actually produced in 1895. A man by the name of Ralph Morris was working in an American telephone exchange when he noticed lights positioned on a long piece of wire in a switchboard. He suddenly had the idea for using these on his Christmas tree and the rest is history!

Every year a huge Christmas tree is put up in London’s Trafalgar Square. This has been a tradition since 1947; the people of Norway give those of Britain this annual gift as a token of thanks for the country’s support in the Second World War.

In the past, Christmas trees around the world came from forests - however nowadays the majority are grown as sustainable crops on dedicated farms.

The very first artificial Christmas trees were made in 19th century Germany, where goose feathers would be dyed green, attached to wire branches and then wrapped around a central rod in place of the trunk.

The largest ever Christmas tree cut (according to the Guinness book of World Records) was a Douglas fir that was displayed at Seattle’s Northgate Shopping centre in 1950. It stood 221 feet tall - that’s just over sixty-seven metres, or thirty-eight average-sized men standing on each other’s heads!

You can actually eat many parts of a Christmas tree, and the needles themselves are a good source of vitamin C. A warning though - not all parts of every species of Christmas tree are edible, so please check with a suitable authority before testing this particular fact.

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