German Info: Celebrating the Season

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O Tannenbaum

Holidays are rich in symbols, and none heralds Christmas more clearly than a festively decorated evergreen tree. The Christmas tree tradition can be traced to Northern Europe, but theories vary on what first inspired people to brighten the dead of winter by bringing nature into their homes. In the Middle Ages, some historians believe, Germans and Scandinavians began placing evergreen trees in their houses or outside their doors in winter as a sign of hope for the coming of spring. By another account, the English missionary Boniface, who came to Germany in the 8th century, introduced the practice of decorating a fir tree in honor of the Christ child to replace the pagan ritual of worshipping at an oak. Still another account credits religious reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) with bringing an evergreen tree indoors and decorating it with candles to recreate for his children the beauty of a night walk in the woods.

The Christmas tree and customs like it can be found in art and literature around the start of the 16th century. As early as 1494, the practice of bringing branches indoors is described by Sebastian Brant in his moral satire Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools). A copper engraving by Lucas Cranach the Elder, dated 1509, shows a tree trimmed with glowing lights and stars.

Tree of Paradise
Some historians connect the Christmas tree with nativity plays performed in the church in medieval times. These often included a reenactment of the story of Adam and Eve. Part of the set was the “tree of paradise” (Paradiesbaum): an evergreen decorated with apples. With the passing of time, the paradise tree grew more elaborate. Nuts, cookies and other sweets replaced apples, making the glories of Eden more palpable. The tree eventually lost its ties to the Old Testament and became a general symbol of Advent. A 1755 account by Frederick the Great of Prussia points back to this source. He wrote of parents hanging “gilded potatoes” on the branches of trees “to present the children with the illusion of paradise apples.”

Christmas trees began appearing more widely in the late 18th century. Author Johann Wolfgang Goethe describes a candle-lit tree in the novel Die Leiden des Jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther), published in 1774. Four years earlier he had seen a similarly decorated tree in Strasbourg for the first time.

From Germany to America
The practice spread from Germany to North America with German immigrants settling in Pennsylvania and Ohio. German settlers in Pennsylvania began to decorate community trees and take trees into their homes in the 1700s. When a London newspaper published an image of Queen Victoria and her husband, Germany’s Prince Albert, and their family gathered around a Christmas tree in 1846, the custom suddenly became fashionable in both England and America. In 1891, President Benjamin Harrison launched the tradition of decorating a tree in front of the White House. Forty years later New York’s Rockefeller Center got its first monumental Christmas tree.

O Tannenbaum
Christmas tree ornaments have a long history as well. The Christmas Museum in the medieval Bavarian town Rothenburg ob der Tauber exhibits some that are nearly 200 years old, as well the famous hand-made creations of the Erzgebirge region in eastern Germany. Also on display are more than 400 new and antique nutcrackers. The museum is sponsored by the Käthe Wohlfart company, a business that initially capitalized on the popularity of Erzgebirge decorations among U.S. military servicemen and women stationed in Germany.

Germans have memorialized their love of the Christmas tree in a song, familiar to Americans as O Christmas Tree. The German version still sung today, O Tannenbaum, was penned by Ernst Anschütz of Leipzig in 1824, though Tannenbaum songs date back as far as 1550.