Christmas tree
A fir or other evergreen brought indoors at Christmas and hung with lights and ornaments. The first sure record is from Strasbourg in 1605; where the custom began is disputed.
Meaning
For the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops the tree recalls the tree of paradise of the medieval mystery plays and the light that stands for Christ, “the Light of the world”; by custom it goes up just before Christmas and may stay until the Epiphany, and its lights are switched on after a prayer of blessing. Clement Miles, writing in 1912, thought the double image of Christ as the Light of the World and the Tree of Life may have given the tree its Christian meaning. James Lancaster of the University of Queensland calls it today a largely secular symbol. In Miles’s time it was still more Protestant than Catholic and spread slowly where the older faith held, though it had already passed from Protestant churches in Germany into Catholic ones.
Origin and history
In 1605 an unnamed citizen of Strasbourg noted that at Christmas people there set up fir trees in their parlours and hung them with roses cut from coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold foil and sweets. This is the first certain record, and the Catholic Encyclopedia (Martindale, 1908) agrees on the date. A Strasbourg preacher, Johann Konrad Dannhauer, complained around the middle of the century of trees hung with dolls and sweets: “Whence comes the custom I know not; it is child’s play.” Neither mentions candles. They appear in 1737, in Karl Gottfried Kissling’s account from Wittenberg of a country lady who lit candles on a little tree for each of her children.
Britain had a tree before Prince Albert. Alison Barnes in History Today credits Queen Charlotte, the German wife of George III, who set up the first known English tree at Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, in December 1800, after years of dressing a single yew branch as she had in Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Albert set up trees at Windsor in 1840, and in 1848 the Illustrated London News printed the royal family around a candlelit tree with glass ornaments.
Did Martin Luther start it?
No record shows it. The story has Luther walking through a pine forest near Wittenberg one winter night (Barnes gives the year as 1536), seeing the stars through the branches, and setting up a candlelit tree for his children. Miles called it “a pretty story” that “belongs to the region of legend”; Lancaster says it is not supported by scholarship. Snopes adds one true element: German Lutherans and other Protestants were among the first to take up the tree.
Which town had the first tree?
Riga claims the first tree in 1510 and Tallinn in 1441, both from the merchant brotherhoods of the Blackheads. Gustavs Strenga of the National Library of Latvia told NPR in 2016 that 19th-century historians made that story out of trees in the brotherhoods’ records, carried in carnival processions before Lent and burned in the market square; he places the tree’s roots in 16th-century Germany. Snopes cites a record of 1521 from Sélestat in Alsace paying guards to protect the town’s fir trees in early December.
Pagan evergreens or the tree of paradise?
The sources do not agree. Alexander Tille, as Miles reports him, saw the tree as a union of the Roman custom of decking houses with laurels and green trees at the January Kalends and the belief that trees blossomed on Christmas Eve. Miles allowed the Roman link as possible, found closer parallels in German folk customs of sacred trees, and noted that there is no record of a Christmas tree in Germany before the 17th century. The bishops trace it to the tree of paradise of the medieval mystery plays. Miles adds that 24 December was Adam and Eve’s day in old church calendars, and that at Oberufer the paradise tree of the Christmas play was a juniper hung with apples and ribbons. Lancaster rejects any pagan origin: the tree “as we know it is completely unrelated” to Saturnalia or other pagan festivals, and the story of St Boniface and the fir is a legend. Snopes notes that Willibald, the earliest account of Boniface felling the oak, says nothing of a fir.
Read next
- Next in Christmas symbolsHollyAn evergreen with prickly leaves and red berries, used to deck English houses and churches at Christmas since at least the 15th century. The carol The Holly and the Ivy pairs its white flower, red berry, prickle and bitter bark each with a verse about Mary and Jesus.
- The same shape in Jewish symbolsStar of DavidA six-pointed star made of two triangles, the Magen David (“shield of David”), and today the most common symbol of Judaism.
See also
Star of Bethlehem, Advent wreath, Candy cane, Nativity scene, Mistletoe, Poinsettia.
Sources
- Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (Clement A. Miles, 1912), Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1912); Project Gutenberg e-text 19098, Internet Archive (Project Gutenberg text), chapter XI, The Christmas-tree
- Advent (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Liturgical Year: Advent; as archived 28 August 2026, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Blessing of a Christmas Tree
- A story of legends, families and capitalism: a candid history of the Christmas tree (James A. T. Lancaster, 2022), James A. T. Lancaster, Lecturer in Studies in Western Religious Traditions, University of Queensland; The Conversation, 19 December 2022, The Conversation, opening paragraphs; Britain; America
- The First Christmas Tree (Alison Barnes, History Today, 2006), Alison Barnes, History Today, vol. 56, issue 12, December 2006, History Today, article text
- Who First Decorated The Christmas Tree? Historian Says Neither Latvia Or Estonia (NPR, 2016), All Things Considered, NPR, 23 December 2016; interview with Gustavs Strenga, National Library of Latvia, NPR, transcript
- In Search of the 1st Christmas Tree: Origins of a Tradition (Jack Izzo, Snopes, 2023), Jack Izzo, Snopes, 10 December 2023, updated 26 November 2024, Snopes, Boniface; Riga and Tallinn; Alsace
- Christmas (Catholic Encyclopedia), C. C. Martindale, “Christmas”, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908), New Advent, Greenery
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from stars or triangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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