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”.
The pine tree is a staple of American society. It is one of the few kinds of trees to be specifically grown on farms for commercial use. Of all the uses for pine trees, Christmas trees are doubtlessly the most famous. Pine trees are evergreen trees with long, needle-shaped leaves. An evergreen tree means that the tree has leaves year-round. Unlike deciduous trees, evergreen trees lose their needles on an individual basis throughout the tree’s life.
They are planted all over North America, particularly in northern parts of the United States. Some pine trees do not grow to be full-blown trees, often they simply turn out to be shrubs. The crown, or top, of the tree is a cone-like shape when young, but rounds out or even flattens out as the tree ages.
The distinctive characteristic of a pine tree is the cone, which the pine tree uses to reproduce. Pine cones first emerge as green-colored scaly buds from the ends of pine branches. As the cones mature, they dry out and open. Each ‘petal’ of the cone is actually a seed that is either picked up by birds or by the wind. The seeds will hopefully be spread out so the pine trees spread.
Usually for cones to mature takes about two to three years, depending on the particular species of the tree. Also, the cone petals may be sealed with resin for long periods of time even after the cone has reached maturity. These cones will only be opened with the resin is dried by fire; this is why forest fires help generate new flora growth, especially if the fires are controlled as they burn.
A pine tree’s bark is basically the skin of the tree. It protects the soft inner wood of the tree from animals or marauding air-borne particles. The bark grows along with the tree and often can help to identify the tree’s age to specialists. Bark on older trees is thicker and ‘gnarlier’ than bark on younger trees. This is because a tree grows a new ‘skin’ of bark over the old skin every year. This is what produces growth rings when you look at a cross-section of a tree’s trunk. Usually the most growth happens in the spring due to the fact that there is more moisture in the spring. During the summer growth begins to taper off, and by the fall season growth has almost stopped entirely due to the lack of moisture.
Pine trees are versatile plants capable of living for many hundreds of years. The wood is used in everything from bookshelves to tables to chairs, and then some. Pine furniture, pine bedroom furniture, pine living room furniture, pine office furniture, etc. can be a valuable addition to your home.
