It’s hard to imagine celebrating Christmas without our favorite holiday traditions. But it took hundreds of years to create today’s Christmas! Here are the fascinating, surprising, and sometimes wacky beginnings of classic Christmas traditions.
#1: Christmas trees used to be lit with candles
When Christmas trees first gained popularity in the Middle Ages, people lit them with candles. (Don’t try that at home - it’s a major fire hazard!) Surprisingly, it wasn’t Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, who first strung light bulbs around a Christmas tree. His friend, Edward Hibbered Johnson, was the person who came up with the idea in 1882. By 1914, strings of Christmas tree lights were being mass produced, making candle-lit trees obsolete. Today, about 150 million sets of lights are sold in the U.S. each year!
#2: Poinsettias are native to the tropics
Poinsettias were first brought to the United States by Joel Roberts Poinsettia, the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico in the 1820s. He thought the native red flowers had Christmas potential, so he lent them his name! 100 years later, Californian horticulturist Paul Ecke brought poinsettias into the limelight by donating them to TV show sets. Since 1986, they’ve been the best-selling potted plant in the nation, even though they’re only bought during the Christmas season!
#3: Queen Elizabeth I helped invent gingerbread houses
When gingerbread cookies were first invented, most people ate them without icing or decorations. But Queen Elizabeth I changed all that when she instructed her chefs to decorate her gingerbread! Her beautiful baked goods inspired German bakers to build entire houses out of gingerbread. They even used her preferred icing techniques to glue the cookies together!
#4: Folded Christmas cards are over 100 years old
The first Christmas card debuted in 1843. Its message read, “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You”! The Hall Brothers company (now known as Hallmark) sold the first folded cards with envelopes in 1915. Today, more than 1.6 billion holiday cards are sold annually!
#5: The 12 Days of Christmas are mostly after Christmas
While this song is often played before Christmas Day, the 12 days of Christmas are officially December 25 to January 6! The 12 days traditionally symbolize the time between Jesus’s birth and the Wise Men’s visit. The earliest version of the carol was likely published as a poem in Mirth With-out Mischief, a children’s book from 1780. To day, it would cost over $200,000 to buy all 364 individual items named in the carol!
#6: Yule logs are old - and new
Many ancient people celebrated the winter solstice by burning a log. But watching a Yule Log burn only became a tradition 50 years ago! In 1966, a New York City channel called WPIX-TV aired a continuous 17-second loop of a fireplace for three hours with holiday music in the background. Later, people began using the internet to create Yule Log livestreams and on-demand videos.
#7: Salvation Army kettles came from England
Salvation Army volunteers have been collecting money in their red kettles to help the needy since 1891! These annual collections started with Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee, who wanted to raise enough money to serve Christmas dinner to 1,000 people. Inspired by a coin collection kettle he had seen in England, Joseph set up the first red kettle in San Francisco. Today, the Salvation Army helps more than 4.5 million people during the holiday season.
Next time you make holiday cards or Christmas cookies, don’t forget their exciting backstories. It’s not easy becoming a classic holiday tradition! What’s your favorite Christmas tradition? Click the blue button below to vote! 👓