Its branches spread wide over the table on Christmas Eve, and its lights shine and twinkle right merrily; and among its green leaves hang toys and presents for every one of the family.
--The Christmas Tree (1856)
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| The Christmas Tree, Godey's, December 1855 |
In the early 1830s-1840s, American and British magazines describe the Christmas tree as a German invention, which requires explanation. By the mid-1850s, the practice has apparently become familiar with the reading audience.
DRESSING THE CHRISTMAS TREE IN GERMANYThis is performed with great ceremony and mystery, on Christmas Eve, by the elders of the family without the knowledge of the younger members. They deck a large evergreen with presents of various kinds: to toys, bonbons, and such trifles, are added things of more value and use--working materials for the girls, knives, &c. for the boys, and books of amusement and instruction for both. Little tapers are attached to the branches of the shrub; and at break of day the children are roused from their slumber, and when all are ready (for no one is allowed to enter singly) they are admitted into the room where the illuminated tree greets their eyes. Great is the anxiety of the young party to see who has been provided for, since the idea they are taught to entertain is, that these tempting objects are bestowed by an invisible agent, as a reward for good children, and that the naughty and ill-conducted will find no share allotted to them...--The Mirror of Literature (1831)
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| The Christmas Tree. Godey's, 1850. Very similar to the image of Queen Victoria and her family with a Christmas tree, which first appeared in Illustrated London News in 1848. Godey's repeated it with a short story, "The Christmas Tree", in 1860. |
For the benefit of those of our readers who are not acquainted with the beautiful descriptions of the Chritmas-tree in Mary Howitt's and other modern works and translations, we will just say that the one in question was a young fir-tree, placed in a large tub gaily painted for the occasion. Its branches were hung with tiny tapers, cut paper, oranges, apples, bunches of raisins, figs, bonbons, and other showy and delicate trifles, besides more solid ornaments, in the shape of pretty and suitable presents for the children, young people, and servants.
--"The Christmas Bride" The Illustrated New York Journal (1854)
In 1855, Godey's ran a brief history of the Christmas tree (in the 1850s-pop-history-just-assert-things-are-true genre).
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| Frontis to A Leaf From A Christmas Tree (1852) |
Chymical, Natural and Physical Magic (1858) offers instructions for setting up a Christmas tree:
First provide a young fir tree capable of being planted in a good sized flower pot. This being done set it upon a box or anything else that will give elevation so as to form a pedestal. The pedestal and pot must be decorated with leaves of the season and the mould covered with moss so as to give everything a neat appearance. At each branch or prong of the tree a small wax taper is to be fixed upright; these tapers should be of as many colours as you can get. Suspended to each branch and at every point that is accessible we are to hang anything and everything that we consider will please our party. Toys for children, sweets for youth, love mottoes and kisses for our third age, and a few crackers for the fun of the thing. When the company comes the tapers are to be lighted and preparations made for the fair distribution of the good things growing on the tree, taking care that there is sufficient fruit for all visitors. A kind of lottery or wheel of fortune is made by numbering a quantity of cards to match your company, they being put into a basket or reticule. Each person is to dip a hand into the lucky bag and withdraw one card. According to the number upon it the rotation of choice from the tree is decided. This plan gives general satisfaction, and few leave your house but will remember in after years your Christmas tree. (p. 121)
A manger scene at the foot of the tree is also possible:
Oh! such a grand and glorious Christmas Tree as never eye of child beheld. Its lower branches spread nearly touching the rose-strewed carpet, just above a wonderful little group of tiny figures which represented the manger, and the wondering large-eyed cattle, the worshipping shepherds, and the holy mother and child. Above these lower branches the glorious tree bore on every bough its harvest of shining Christmas fruit. Tiny toys and trinkets hung glittering from every point; fairy baskets and boxes heaped with sugarplums and dolls, more exquisitely dressed than any Paris beauty, for the girls; trumpets, drums, and swords for the boys; sweet-smelling, sweet-tasting, and deep-coloured oranges, red-cheeked waxen-looking apples; beautiful gold and silver balls lovelier than any fruit but that which grew in Aladdin's orchard; little crystal bells ringing and tinkling with every movement of every branch; gay artificial flowers of every hue, making the great Christmas Tree look as though a blossom from every plant that ever grew had suddenly bloomed in the warm atmosphere upon its dark green boughs. High up above the shining toys and trinkets blazed the cross in green and white and red and yellow tapers. and on the topmost branch of all hovered the heavenly image of the Christ child.
--"The Christmas Tree" in The Christmas Tree and Other Tales (1856)
In a departure from the evergreen, "A Christmas Tree for Christ's Children" has a potted orange tree decorated for Christmas:
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| A Christmas Orange-Tree A Christmas Tree for Christ's Children (1859) |
The Tree was a real growing orange-tree, which Mr Oldham had had brought in from the conservatory and had real oranges growing upon it, though only very small ones except one or two which were riper than the rest; and besides there were sweetmeats of all kinds and a great number of beautiful fancy figures all hung round in the branches; and then there were wax lights all burning in the tree, and the light from them was reflected from the figures, and the crystals of sugar on the sweetmeats, just like bright diamonds, so that the children, one and all, declared they had never seen any thing half so pretty.
--A Christmas Tree for Christ's Children (1859)
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| Christmas--Gathering Evergreens/ The Christmas Tree Engravings by Homer Winslow, Harper's, December 25, 1858. Courtesy of The Met. |
"For there on the table in the centre of the room was a great Christmas tree, lit up with a number of wax tapers of various colours and hung with toys and Christmas presents--a toy or a sweetmeat for every one of us young and old. The joyous cries and exclamations of the children, and the happy looks of the elders of the party quite pleased dear Aunt Harriett and we were speedily dancing and singing round the table like youths and maidens round the maypole in the olden time. Presently we were all very busy in seeking each one for himself the present or toy which bore his name. There were dolls and embroidery work and tiny looking glasses and bon bon crackers and gilt crochet pins and jewellery for the little ladies; and watches and tops and guns and flags and little steam coaches and painted balloons of glass and sweetmeats in gold papers and I don't know what besides for the merry and eager little boys."--The Christmas Tree (1856) p. 3
Apples are another possible decoration (with or without gilt paper to cover them); the tree in that story also is adorned with "colored tapers, sugar lambs with red ribbons round their necks, doves with red heads and tails ,storks with red bills, hearts with red darts inflicting crimson wounds, and rosy lyres with golden strings." [Christmas Eve" in Holly and Mistletoe (1860) . p. 71-75.]
The room was brilliantly lighted up with coloured lamps hanging from the ceiling and the walls, and gaily festooned with green leaves and coronets of holly-berries and mistletoe. There was no furniture in the room, but in the centre, on the floor, there was placed a gigantic Christmas Tree, whose topmost branches almost reached the ceiling. It was loaded with toys and presents, and dazzling with light, which proceeded from a multitude of little tapers hung about among the dark fir branches in all directions; and numerous little glass globes, sparkling with various metallic colours, that made them look like balls of gold and silver, added to the beautiful effect...all--men, women, and children--commenced searching about among the branches for the toys and presents that bore their names...for an hour or more the fun continued, till nearly every one in the room had possession of a bon-bon in gilt paper, or a toy watch, or a box of sweetmeats, or a bundle of crackers, or something of that kind. There were sugar-frosted fruits and sweetmeats, with mottoes slily concealed inside, for the ladies and gentlemen; and little dolls, and little tops, and little coloured balls, and all kinds of toys and confectionery for the boys and girls, with numerous other things for which I can find no names.
---"The Christmas Tree and The Toys That Jenny Hung Upon It" in The Christmas Tree by G. F. Parton (3rd Annual, 1858)
I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-checked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs as in preparation for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in appearance than many real men--and no wonder for their heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugarplums; there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, all kinds of boxes; there were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend "There was everything, and more."
--"A Christmas Tree" in Household Words, ed. Charles Dickens (1851)
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| "The Christmas Tree" from Christmas Poems and Pictures (1864) |
Punch's facetious "Crinoline Christmas Tree" must also be mentioned.
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| Christmas Morning (1844) by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller |
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