One of the most special times during the Holiday season is the lighting of the Christmas Tree. There is something just so awe-inspiring about it. One of my personal traditions that I hold dear to my heart, is after my daughter and I decorated the Christmas tree we turned off all the lights purposely until it was dark. Once it was dark and we had some leftover Thanksgiving dinner, I would have my daughter go into the other room so she couldn’t see the tree and while I plugged the lights in, I quickly kept my eyes closed until I got to the other room with my daughter. In the background of course, was the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack, setting the ambiance for what was to appear, I would then take her hand doing everything I could to not open my eyes. As we inched forward out of the dark room, feeling the light upon our eyelids, we counted to three and opened our eyes to seeing a beautiful lighted Christmas tree before us.
Christmas is known for celebrating Jesus’s birth. For a long time, the Roman Catholic Church celebrated his birth. For many years prior, cultures celebrated in some capacity the darker cooler nights. During pagan days and early times, the winter solstice was celebrated. According to research it was 1600’s in the Germany area that the idea, as we know it, of illuminating an evergreen tree formed. The evergreen represented life during the cold season and lighting candles represented light during the very dark nights. I am unsure of how they put the candles in the trees but I did read they had little pins or wax that held them to the tree. The candles in the trees existed for quite some time even though it caused many fires.
In the late 1800’s Edward Johnson who was Thomas Edison’s assistant is credited as the inventor of colored electric lights. There is research that publications reported his pear-shaped bulbs on a single wire and were red, white and blue. He was a little too early with his invention for it took about forty more years before electric-colored lights became popular, affordable and fundamentally a tradition.
It goes even deeper than just an inventor making a string of lights. The other part of history that is worth mentioning is the Puritan movement in America. For over 250 years the Puritan way of the land was to abolish Christmas traditions in all ways necessary. It was seen as unproductive as a society to take any such time to celebrate for this was the Industrial Revolution in America during these times. I found this very interesting because it made me appreciate even more the tradition of the lighting of the Christmas Tree because at one time it was almost completely taken away. People persisted over those 250 years to still celebrate. Afterall, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was published in 1843.
They persisted so much so that by 1912 a tree was placed in Madison Square Park in New York City, which marked the annual tradition of the annual tree lighting in Rockefeller Center in New York City.
And to solidify the tradition, Presidents of the United States would put up trees with lights starting in 1856 at the White House in Washington D.C.
With Johnson’s invention, cultures determined to celebrate and cost of electricity going down the tradition of lighting an Evergreen tree has stuck. So, the next time you see a Christmas tree light up this Holiday season think of not only the wonderment but also what it took for us today to partake in such traditions as the Lighting of the Tree.
Our events page does a good job of listing all the Christmas Tree lightings for you so that you may visit one or all of them! Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays from all of us here at the Alouette Beach Resort!
