The use of evergreens as holiday decorations dates back thousands of years to when ancient Romans and Egyptians used evergreens as part of their Winter Solstice celebrations. The first known decorated Christmas Tree was in Latvia in 1510. An evergreen tree was decorated with roses. Alsace, France is also sometimes recognized as the birthplace of the Christmas Tree, based upon a depiction of a decorated “paradise tree” from a play about Adam and Eve. By the 1700s, some European Christmas Trees were decorated with lit candles.
It is believed that the concept of the Christmas Tree came to America with Hessian soldiers fighting alongside the British during the American Revolution. Probably the first account of an American Christmas Tree is 1804 when soldiers at Fort Dearborn in Chicago brought evergreen trees into their barracks during the holiday season. Charles Minnegrode is recognized for introducing to America the custom of a decorated Christmas Tree in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1842. One year earlier Prince Albert, the German husband of Queen Victoria, decorated a Christmas Tree in England’s Windsor Castle.
We’ll probably never know when or where the first decorated American Christmas Tree occurred; however, it was prior to 1842. Though York, Pennsylvania was part of Penn’s Woods, and had a notable population of English Quakers, the area was predominately settled by people from the Palatinate, an area that is today part of Germany. These Pennsylvania Deutsch (later mistranslated as “Dutch”) brought with them German Christmas traditions, including decorated trees. This tradition undoubtedly spread to other local residents, as evidenced by this newspaper advertisement, which ran in the York Demographic Press in 1840.
