Where do our Christmas traditions come from? – Immie Pearson
Every family has different traditions at Christmas and specific ways they like to carry out their Christmas Day routine. Some people open presents at the crack of dawn, others after lunch, some people venture out to midnight mass and go on Christmas walks while others lounge in their pajamas eating chocolates.
Whatever your traditions though there are certain things that are synonymous with the festive period, but why do we have a Christmas tree? Who came up with advent calendars? All questions I plan on answering.
- Christmas tree – Many people believe the tradition of putting up a Christmas tree started with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were major fans of Christmas and popularised the tradition. In reality Christmas trees originate from Germany and where introduced to England in the Gregorian period, when George the third was on the throne. Originally people just had little trees on their tables but eventually it became easier to get evergreen trees from Norway and so started the tradition of hauling a massive tree into out houses once a year.
- Advent Calendar – While I and I’m sure many people do, view an advent calendar as en excuse to have chocolate everyday the christian tradition dates back rather far, and once again we have Germany to thank. From the early nineteenth century, at the latest, German Protestants began to mark the days of Advent either by burning a candle for the day, while others marked walls or doors with a line of chalk. Then a new practice of hanging a devotional image every day emerged ultimately leading to the creation of the first known handmade, wooden, Advent calendar in 1851. Sometime in the early twentieth century the first printed calendars appeared, followed by Gerhard Lang’s innovation of adding small doors in the 1920s, and from then on the global phenomenon grew to the chocolate delights we now know and love.
* Christmas cards – Now just a practice carried out usually last minute with little effort, the act of sending a Christmas card had a lot of thought put into it. Started in the UK by Sir Henry Cole, a senior civil servant who helped set up what we now know as the Post Office, wanted the service to be able to be used by ordinary people. So with the help of his artist friend John Horsley They designed the first card and sold them for 1 shilling each. (about 5p) The card had three panels. The outer two panels showed people caring for the poor and in the center panel was a family having a large Christmas dinner! Some people didn’t like the card because it showed a child being given a glass of wine! About 1000 were printed and sold. As printing methods improved, Christmas cards became much more popular and were produced in large numbers from about 1860. In 1870 the cost of sending a postcard, and also Christmas cards, dropped to half a penny. This meant even more people were able to send cards. And from then on Christmas cards grew in popularity across the world, all thanks to one civil servant who wanted to make the postal service more accessible.
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