Many people nowadays prefer to buy cheap goods that look good and have famous brand names even if they do not last long. No matter what they say, not many people are actually willing to pay for good quality products that can last a lifetime. This is as true for bedroom furniture as it is for hi-tech electronics like televisions. This is why most furniture that you will find in the shops today are made of cheap plywood or fiberboard that can barely even last a decade of normal use. Pine bedroom furniture, as well as any other furniture made of real wood, are now luxury items.

Pine wood is beautiful – they have natural knots and grains. That is why branded furniture stick a veneer of pine on their outer surfaces. But beds and wardrobes made from solid planks of pine wood do not need to use such tricks to look good. Furthermore, the natural grains of the wood can be further highlighted through the use of stains. Unlike a bed made from fiberboard, there is no need to paint a bed made from pine wood. That is not to say that white-painted bedroom furniture made of pine does not look good, just that it is such a waste.

In terms of esthetics, pine wood furniture have another advantage over fiberboard furniture. While fiberboard can be molded and carved to a certain extent, there is a practical limit to how much they can be worked. That means there is a limit to how elaborately they can be decorated. Furniture made from pine does not suffer from this limitation. If you compare two beds with gothic-styling like the Victorian style side by side, the one made from solid pine is always more sophisticated and beautiful.

Visual beauty is not the only point where pine furniture trumps fiberboard furniture. Freshly cut pine releases a pleasant fragrance. This is why there is a demand for unfinished pine furniture which is sanded to a high smoothness but not waxed, varnished or painted in any way.

Like all solid wood furniture, quality pine bedroom furniture needs to be properly maintained. Even furniture made from a hardwood like oak needs proper care, what more furniture made from a softwood like pine. Pine scratches and dents more easily than oak. Pine also warps, bends, or cracks when exposed to extremes of weather. Fortunately, there are many good products on the market that can protect wood furniture – waxes, varnish, lacquer, etc. Long-time owners of pine furniture find that a good annual polishing is often good enough to keep up the good condition.

Based on this need for maintenance, one might start to think that pine is weaker than fiberboard. This is not true. The reasons for taking more care with pine furniture are that they are more expensive, and they can last so much longer than cheap fiberboard furniture. After all, when was the last time your cheap fiberboard furniture lasted more than a decade? But pine furniture can easily last two or three decades if you take care of it properly.

If you can afford the higher price tag, it makes sense to invest in pine bedroom furniture. After all, you spend one-third of your life in your bedroom. Isn’t it worthwhile to reflect this importance in the quality of your bedroom furnishings?

Although German settlers had brought Christmas trees to America in the early 1800s, and records point to the existence of Christmas trees in Colonial German homes as early as 1747, Americans were slow to accept the Christmas tree. Probably due to the Puritans’ fierce invective against all things pagan, it took a British monarch to start the Christmas tree on the road to its incredible popularity today. In 1846, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, her German consort, were sketched standing around a Christmas tree with their children. Victoria was popular amongst her subjects, unlike the previous monarch William IV, and whatever happened at the court immediately became fashionable amongst her subjects, and not just in Britain. In fashion-conscious East Coast U.S. society, whatever was adopted in Britain as vogue became adopted soon after. The Christmas tree had finally arrived in America.

In the late 19th century/early 20th century, Christmas trees were decorated with handmade wooden ornaments. Britons liked their trees to be table-top height, while Americans liked their trees to be floor-to-ceiling monuments. German-Americans continued their earlier tradition of decorating their trees with nuts, marzipan cookies and nuts. Dyed popcorn strung up with berries and nuts made its first appearance soon afterward.

Decorations signify an intention to beautify one’s surroundings. There are all kinds of decorations available for Christmas trees today, made of all sorts of materials. Round balls, wooden Santa carvings, even miniature Christmas trees to hang on Christmas trees! But all these details fail to get at the real heart of the Christmas tree. The Christmas tree is a symbol of the goodwill of Christmas, a celebration of “Peace on earth to men of goodwill”. Ultimately the Christmas tree is not about the decorations, or even about the pine tree itself. The tree is about gathering around and celebrating the time of Christmas, a time so sacred that during one Christmas Eve in World War I French, German and English soldiers ceased hostilities to celebrate it together.

With the coming of electricity, it became possible to light Christmas trees for days or even weeks. President Calvin Coolidge introduced the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923. Since they have been introduced Christmas trees have been an indispensable symbol of  Christmas all over the world. Let’s keep it that way.

The first written record of a Christmas tree comes from the year 1510, in Riga, Latvia. According to the record, local men of the town decorated a pine tree with fake roses, danced around it for a night, and then set fire to it. The rose was considered to be a symbol of the Virgin Mary. Other records point to the Christmas tree originating in Germany. Christians brought trees into their houses and decorated them with colored paper, roses and apples. Popular legend holds that Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, was the first one to put lighted candles on Christmas trees.

While coming home on a dark winter night close to Christmastime, he stopped in his tracks and marveled at the way stars shone through the branches of a small fir tree just outside his home. He replicated the effect by placing lighted candles in a tree he cut down and brought inside. While this is doubted as to the literal veracity of its truth, most records do point to the Christmas tree phenomenon starting in Germany. In fact, the first Christmas trees were brought to America by German settlers in the 1800s. Not long afterwards, Christmas trees started to change from table-top size to room-sized.

Early Christmas trees used to have fairies instead of angels. Fairies were thought to be good spirits that brought good luck to the household. Horns and bells were hung on the branches of the tree to ward off evil spirits. The sound of the bells was thought to frighten them. In Poland, Christmas trees used to be decorated with angels, peacocks and stars. A longstanding tradition in Sweden is to decorate trees with hand-crafted wooden ornaments as well as straw figures of children and animals. The Ukrainians have a live spider complete with web in their trees for good luck.An old Ukrainian legend states that an old women who had nothing to decorate her tree with woke up and saw that the spider webs on her tree had been turned to silver by the rising sun.

In early Colonial America, the Puritans banned Christmas trees because of their supposed pagan origins. William Bradford, the second governor of the Pilgrims, wrote that he tried his best to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the Christmas observance, severely penalizing any violators. Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of Commonwealth England, preached against Christmas carols because of their “heathen influences”.