THE CHRISTMAS TREE IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA
Coleridge’s letter, as we have seen, was written in January 1826. In
the succeeding December the English people were to obtain a nearer view
of the Christmas tree. A great German lady, the Princess Lieven, who
had taken up her residence for a season in London brought many German
customs with her.
“On Christmas,” says Henry Greville, an amusing gossip whose diary was
published after his death, “the Princess Lieven got up a little fête
such as is customary all over Germany. Three trees, in great pots,
were put upon a long table covered with pink linen. Each tree was
illuminated with three circular tiers of colored wax candles,--blue,
green, red and white. Before each tree was displayed a quantity of
toys, gloves, pocket-handkerchiefs, work boxes, books and various
articles--presents made to the owner of the tree. It was very pretty.
Here it was only for the children. In Germany the custom extends to
persons of all ages.”
Not yet, however, did the custom pass over to England. The people who
saw the tree in the parlor of the Princess Lieven or who heard about
it from those who had there seen it, made no attempt to copy it in
their own homes. A dozen years were to pass before the tree took firm
roots in English soil.
It was the marriage of Queen Victoria to a German prince--Albert of
Saxe-Coburg--that brought about this result. The first child was a
daughter (named Victoria after her mother) who became Empress of
Germany and the mother of the present Emperor William. The second child
was a son, who is now King Edward VII of England. When the Princess
Victoria was about five years old Prince Albert set up a Christmas
tree, German fashion, in the royal nursery at Windsor Castle.
A writer in the _Cornhill Magazine_ places the date of the introduction
of the Christmas tree into England as December 1841. He remembers,
he says, when his parents, “who had spent many winters in Germany,
first introduced it, some forty-five years ago into England, what
astonishment it created, what surprised delight it afforded.”
This writer gives a little too much credit to his parents. No mere
subjects of the queen could have made other people follow so readily
in their footsteps. The royal example, however, was sufficient. Once
a Christmas tree had been set up in Windsor Castle, you may be sure
that Christmas trees blazed and twinkled in every British household
that could afford one. It has remained ever since just what it is with
us,--the centre of all the Christmas festivities.
From the _London News_ for December, 1848, I have taken a picture which
represents the Windsor Castle Christmas tree with the English royal
family of that date grouped around it. It is interesting to note how
this English paper deals with the novelty recently brought over from
Germany.
“The tree employed for this festive purpose,” says the _News_, “is a
young fir about eight feet high, and has six tiers of branches. On
each tier, or branch, are arranged a dozen wax tapers. Pendent from
the branches are elegant trays, baskets, _bonbonnières_, and other
receptacles for sweetmeats, of the most varied and expensive kind;
and of all forms, colours, and degrees of beauty. Fancy cakes, gilt
gingerbread and eggs filled with sweetmeats, are also suspended by
variously-coloured ribbons from the branches. The tree, which stands
upon a table covered with white damask, is supported at the root
by piles of sweets of a larger kind, and by toys and dolls of all
descriptions, suited to the youthful fancy, and to the several ages
of the interesting scions of Royalty for whose gratification they are
displayed. The name of each recipient is affixed to the doll, bonbon,
or other present intended for it, so that no difference of opinion
in the choice of dainties may arise to disturb the equanimity of the
illustrious juveniles. On the summit of the tree stands the small
figure of an angel, with outstretched wings, holding in each hand a
wreath.”
The tree, we are further told, was an object of much interest to all
visitors at Windsor Castle from Christmas Eve, when it was first set
up, until Twelfth Night, when it was taken down. Other trees were
placed in other rooms of the castle. Prince Albert had his, which was
decorated and hung with presents by Queen Victoria, who in her turn
received a tree furnished in the same manner by her consort.
Two trees also stood on the sideboard of the royal dining room and
presented, we are told, “a brilliant appearance when all the tapers are
lighted up among the branches.”
In America the Christmas tree had become a fixture long before its
appearance in England. German emigrants to our shores had brought it
over with them, just as in earlier times the Dutch settlers of New York
had brought over Santa Klaus. But it flourished in German settlements
alone for many years before it was adopted by their neighbors, the
northern descendants of the English Puritans and Pilgrims, or the
southern descendants of the English Cavaliers.
New York, as the great landing place for emigrants and also as a city
whose Dutch beginnings had given it a leaning towards the Teutonic
spirit, was the first spot in which the German Christmas tree made a
new home for itself. Gradually but surely the custom spread to citizens
of other than German birth. Fathers of families got into the habit
every Christmas of going out into the forests surrounding New York to
cut a young spruce or fir tree for the holiday times. Or if they were
rich enough to employ men-servants, they sent out the footman or the
butler for this purpose.
It is said that a woodsman named Mark Carr, who was born among the
foothills of the Catskill Mountains in the early part of the nineteenth
century, was the first to make a regular business of Christmas trees.
He had heard or read of the holiday festivities in the great city of
New York, where churches and private parlors were hung with holly and
hemlock leaves, and a pine or a fir tree stood in the middle of the
nursery, covered with presents for the children.
It occurred to him that the young fir trees growing on the
mountain-sides all around his little country home might be made use
of for these holiday purposes. He could run no great risks in making
trial of the idea. All he could lose was the time it took him to chop
the trees down and bring them into market and the cost of a few days’
living in New York.
In December, 1851, he put his plan into practice. Early in the month he
and his boys loaded a couple of great sleds with young trees cut down
from the neighboring forests, and having hitched a yoke of oxen to each
sled drove them through the deep snow to the Hudson River at Catskill,
whence the father started with them to the city.
One old-fashioned silver dollar secured the use of a strip of sidewalk
on the corner of Greenwich and Vesey streets. Here the hopeful
mountaineer arranged his forest novelties for Christmas buyers. Nor
had he long to wait. Customers flocked to his corner. Starting with
moderate prices he soon raised them, as tree after tree left his hands,
to sums that he would have deemed fabulous when he first dreamed of the
experiment.
Next year he returned to the same place with a much larger stock, and
“from that time to this,” says Hexamer, an old historian of New York,
“business has continued to exist until now hundreds of thousands of
trees are yearly sold from Mark Carr’s old corner.”
At the present day, Christmas tree choppers usually begin work about
the first of November. Thus they avoid the early snow falls which are
liable greatly to increase the difficulties of the business by melting
and freezing again on the trees and making their branches too brittle.
Firs and pines growing in open spaces are preferred to those in dense
woodlands because they are more stocky and symmetrical. As the trees
are felled the woodsmen pile them up beside the forest roads, where
they will keep fresh and green for weeks or if necessary for months.
The balsam fir is the favorite for Christmas trees in the middle and
eastern states. Its leaves retain their color and elasticity longer
than those of the black spruce, of which large numbers are however
shipped into markets further south.