The History of Christmas Decorations

If anything were quite noticeable during the Christmas holiday season it would be all the incredible holiday decorations that are on display during the month of December. While most people can identify these symbols of Christmas, most people are not familiar with the origin of many of these decorations. Considering the fact that many of these decorations come from a great variety of time periods and cultures it is somewhat understandable that most people are not familiar with these voluminous convergences of history. So, to shed a little light on the history of Christmas decorations a brief overview of the origins of some of these decorations will be presented.  

It is widely believed that the concept of Christmas decorations come from the Roman winter festival of Saturnalia where decorating hallways, homes and doorways was quite common. When the non-Christian culture of the Roman Empire was gradually replaced by a Christian majority, many aspects of this winter festival were incorporated into the Christmas celebration and this included the concept of decorating one’s home. 

Probably the most well known Christmas decoration would be the symbol of Christmas itself would be the Christmas tree; but how did the Christmas tree become a part of the Christmas heritage? In pagan religions, the trees were literally worshipped as a symbol of fertility. There is a legend associated with St.  Boniface that he discovered a group of pagans attempted a human sacrifice to an oak tree; St. Boniface chased them away and chopped down the oak and in the oak’s place an evergreen tree grew. From this, the evergreen tree would evolve into a Christmas symbol. 

It is widely believed that Martin Luther developed the notion of decorating Christmas trees. This practice would later be appropriated by churches where Christmas trees would be on display in many churches during the Middle Ages and parishioners would then decorate the trees with apples. In times of famine, apples became rather scarce so people would devise a host of arts and crafts that could be placed on the tree. 

Jumping ahead to the 19^th century, Christmas ornaments would begin to be sold in stores in the United States. To say these ornaments were very popular would be an understatement: in the early 1800’s over $20 MILLION worth of Christmas ornaments were sold one season. Needless to say, this lead to a great expansion of Christmas decorations and ornaments to fulfill a need and the seemingly insatiable need was met.

In a nutshell, it was the Romans and the Pagans who came up with the origins of what would be known as Christmas decorations and it was free market capitalism that would lead to these decorations exploding in popularity. What a strange but true connection!