The Story of the Christmas Tree

• The first Christmas tree was cut down by a man called Martin Luther. He was walking through a forest of pine trees and looked up to see the moon shining through the branches. He thought that it looked so lovely he cut it down, took it indoors and put candles all round it.



• Another legend links it to Saint Boniface who had gone to Germany to teach them about Jesus. He was walking through some woods when he came upon a gathering of people with lighted candles who were just about to make an offering to a pagan god by sacrificing a small boy already tied to an oak tree. Saint Boniface stopped them, got them to put their candles on a nearby spruce tree, and proceeded, by the candle light, to teach them about a loving God and the teachings of his son, Jesus.
• The third version links back to a celebration of Adam and Eve day on the 24th December, when a tree known as the Paradise tree was decorated with apples and fruit and the story of Adam and Eve was acted out.
• It was certainly Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband who made the Christmas tree popular in England. He decorated one in the German custom for his children and wrote to his father in 1841

  Today I have two children of my own...{they} are full of happy wonder at the German Christmas tree and its radiant candles.

Originally Christmas decorations were made up of evergreens, berries and candles. Now a huge industry has been built around the subject providing millions of decorations in brilliant colours made of shiny paper, glass, plastic and many other things. Houses are festooned in streamers of every description and trees have all sorts of decorations hung from their branches as well as lights which are very often designed to look like candles. Early decorations which were hung from branches of Christmas trees were intricately carved and painted wooden items.

There was a lady with lots of children. Her husband had died and life was difficult. The lady worked all hours to provide for her family, there was no money for extras.

Although she was poor the lady was determined that Christmas would be a lovely time for her children. She worked late each night to make little gifts for them all.

Just before Christmas she prepared a little tree and hid it ready to surprise her family on Christmas day. During the night spiders visited the tree and spread their webs all over it.

The Christ child saw the tree and knew that the lady would be upset to see it looking so dirty. He turned all of the webs to shining silver.

On Christmas morning the woman was overjoyed to see it looking more lovely than she had imagined.