Last week we brought and put up our Christmas tree in our home, my daughters favorite thing! It got me thinking that I actually didn’t know the history of the Christmas tree and why we bring an evergreen tree into our homes at Christmas. I did a little bit of research.
As we know a Christmas tree is usually an evergreen conifer that we decorate at Christmas, they are generally spruce, like a Norway Spruce (Picea abies); a fir like the Nordman Fir (Abies nordmanniana) or possible the Colorado Spruce (Picea pungens) with it’s beautiful blue hue to its needles.
If, like me until now, you don’t know your spruce (Picea) from your pine (Abies) then the easy way to tell the 2 species apart is that the cones on a spruce hang down and the cones on a pine stick up like candles on a tree!
The tradition of the Christmas tree was developed in medieval Livonia (now Estonia & Latvia) and also in early modern Germany where German Protestant Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. Trees would have been decorated with flowers (roses) made of coloured paper, apples, tinsel and sweetmeats and candels. With the invention of electricity, Christmas lights on a tree began to be used.
Today, we have a huge variety of decorations for a tree available to us, with a star often placed on the top of the tree to represent the Angel Gabriel or the Star of Bethlehem. The Christmas tree is very much part of Christian faith when one is put up at the start of advent and removed, along with all the Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night. The Catholic Church long resisted the custom of the Christmas tree and it was not until 1982 that one stood in the Vatican.
To keep your tree looking good until Twelfth Night, here are some tips to keep it looking good:
- If you buy a cut tree, by that I mean one without roots, then buy a good tree holder with a reservoir and put some water in it, keep it well topped up throughout the Christmas period. This will help to stop it dropping it needles.
- Do NOT place your tree close to a radiator, it will respond by shedding it’s needles. They like to be kept as cool as possible after all they are adapted to living outside in harsh, cold winter conditions, a warm living room is not where it would ideally grow.
- If you have a garden you can plant one in after it’s done indoors then buy a tree with roots. Pot it into as large a container as you can and fill it with compost and a sharp sand mixture. Keep it lightly watered and then plant outside in your garden.
- Once your cut tree has been taken down then take it back to the garden centre where you brought it as they may well shred it for free or take it to the dechetterie (rubbish tip) for the dechets vert.
The Alpine Gardener 