O Christmas Tree

Our second season finale dives into the origin of one of the most iconic symbols of many during this time of year: The Christmas Tree.

We go into how exactly people started bringing trees into their house in the middle of winter, how they started lighting them,  why Thomas Edison and Martin Luther are involved, and why exactly Christmas trees were the reason that house insurance had to get changed all the way in the 19th century. 

This is the second season finale, so there will be a break while I work on season 3. 

If you are wanting more Christmas "cheer" in that particular What?! Explain. way, may I suggest our episode entitled "The Special Relationship", which tells of that rock-steady relationship between Canada and the United States, and absolutely how they didn't each have invasion plans to take the other out. Nope. Not at all. 

All seaso
If you're wanting all the latest information on when Season 3 is coming, as well as anything else I'll be working on, Follow us on social media!
 
 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WhatExplainCast

Twitter: @whatexplaincast

Instagram: @whatexplaincast

Transcript

1.       Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to you all! It’s been yet ANOTHER heck of a year, but I’m glad we made it through. I know we all sort of hoped that 2021 would be better, but at least there still remains some hope for a better next year. 

2.       With the chaotic and frenetic last couple years especially, we have a tendency to yearn for the simplicity and traditions of the past. Back when things were easier, you could gather without worry, and chocolate oranges were larger and didn’t cost six dollars. (Six dollars, good lord). 

3.      Christmas is a time of year when this nostalgia hits particularly hard, whether it be through the music from Bing Crosby, recitations of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, or hanging up stockings so that Santa Claus (or somebody) could fill them up with goodies if you’d been good, or coal if you’d been bad. 

4.       But for me, the most fascinating Christmas tradition of all is the Christmas tree. Whether you’re picking your own natural one and bringing it back to the house like a hunter displaying their prey, or hauling an artificial one out of the basement to save on having to go outside in the freezing cold, the Christmas tree tends to be a centerpiece of the household decorations during the month of December. 

5.       At the very least, it was in my house, resplendent with twinkling lights and decorations full of memories, either from when my brother and I were younger, or from even further back to my parent’s childhood. 

6.       That being said, this yuletide tradition wasn’t always the joyful relaxing tradition it is today. In fact, if you were daring enough to try and put Christmas lights on your tree a couple hundreds years ago, you not only were on red alert the entire time, but you had your oldest kid sitting right next to the tree, water bucket in hand. 

7.       I’m Braden Thorvaldson, and this is What?! Explain. 

8.       Well, before we get to the kid with the bucket, lets get to why exactly we HAVE a tree in our house this time of year in the first place. 

9.       The timing of this celebration in many civilizations thousands of years ago was for one particular reason: this was near the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the decking of their various halls with greenery, whether it be palm fronds or evergreen branches, shows the people’s defiance in the face of darkness and the hopes that their fields will soon bear fruit again, that their harvests will be bountiful, and that the darkness will go away in time and make way for the light. 

10.   Egyptians filled their houses with palm fronds at the winter solstice to symbolize the triumph of life over death, as the days would begin to get longer, and the sun god Ra would grow stronger. Early Romans celebrated saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture, and decorated their homes with evergreen boughs, and the list goes on and on. 

11.   However, the Christmas tree itself began in Germany in the 16th century, as many devout Christians brought in evergreen trees from the forests to be decorated in their homes. Martin Luther, creator of the Lutheran branch of Protestantism, was credited for having the idea to start putting lights on said tree, all the way back in the 16th century. 

12.   As the story goes, Luther was walking back home after giving a sermon when he was struck by the beauty of the stars in the night sky above. He tried to find the words to describe them, but simply felt it couldn’t be done justice. 

13.  So to try and describe it to his family, he ended up wiring candles to the Christmas evergreen in his house to show rather than tell, and this Christmas tradition continued on in various forms. 

14.   The Christmas Tree was a constant in many German households for the next few centuries, and even continued with German settlers moving into North America. But to many of the Puritan early settlers in the United States in particular, the Christmas tree was considered a pagan symbol to be stomped out. 

15.   Some considered the Christmas tree a mockery of their most holy day. From the minute they landed in North America, they wanted Christmas to be a time of solemn observance, to the extent that the general Court of Massachusetts created a law in 1659 making any observance of December 25th other than a church service a penal offense. 

16.   In some towns, people were fined for hanging Christmas decorations, and many of the religious leaders of the puritan faith railed against the “pagan mockery” of the observance. 

17.   This Puritan and German stalemate continued well into the 19th century, before an illustration in an 1846 issue of the Illustrated London News finally broke the standoff. Queen Victoria was sketched with her children and her husband, Prince Albert standing around a Christmas tree. 

18.   Albert was initially from Germany, and brought this tradition with him to Windsor when he married Victoria. The Queen was very popular with her subjects, and what the Queen was seen doing was immediately considered fashionable, both in Britain and in many of the eastern parts of North America.

19.    When faced with pressure from both German-descending immigrants and many of their own formerly British citizens, the Puritans relented, and Christmas trees became an accepted Christmas tradition. Or at the very least, they were no longer considered worthy of a penal offense. 

20.   That being said, the Christmas trees and Christmas tree lighting procedures of yesteryear are a far cry from what happens today. 

21.   First of all, the trees were only brought in a couple days before Christmas, to avoid them drying out in the house. Secondly, the candles were tied to the branches themselves with wire or rope as securely as they could. Additionally, there was no leaving the candles lit for long periods of time. 

22.   The adults in the house lit all the candles in the evening, the family would gather around the tree to take a look for a few minutes, and then the candles were promptly put out before the fire got too close to any of the branches. 

23.   As well, there were a couple buckets of water near the tree in case the fire from one of the candles spread, but sometimes that precaution wasn’t enough. As of 1908, enough fires happened due to the candles on the Christmas tree that insurance companies no longer covered Christmas tree-related fires. 

24.   Another of the founding fathers of the Christmas tree decorations as we know them is Thomas Edison, inventor, self-promotion expert, and famed elephant electrocutor. (Believe me, the third one does merit a full minisode to do it justice, but suffice to say for now that elephant did not having it coming.) 

25.   However, the reasons we are talking about him today are two-fold: his invention of the electric lightbulb, and his aforementioned penchant for showy displays of self-promotion. In October of 1879, Edison created the first incandescent bulb, and by December of 1880, he has the process pretty well nailed down. 

26.   Edison was looking for a way to both celebrate the Christmas season and (coincidentally) advertise his new invention. He managed to merge the two in the first Electric Christmas light display, over his laboratory in Menlo Park. 

27.   Commuters on the nearby railway could look at the spectacle as they went to and from work, and once word got around about this electric light show, people came from miles away to see this display of Christmas-based technology. 

28.   Two years later, the first electrically-lit Christmas tree was displayed in the home of Edward H Johnson, a friend of Edison’s, and most importantly, joint partner in the Edison Illumination Company, which sold lightbulbs. 

29.   Johnson hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue bulbs together to create this first of its kind decoration, which was then promptly used as an advertisement for the Edison Illumination Company. Merry Christmas indeed. 

30.   But Christmas lights didn’t become the ubiquitous part of the season for decades to come. In fact, when Christmas lights were first advertised, they were suggested to be RENTED rather than owned, as one string of Christmas lights cost about $12 in 1900 when they were first advertised, or about $342 today. 

31.   As you may have gathered, just having one string of Christmas lights was enough for your family to be considered wealthy, so that is what they were for the first couple decades of existence: a status symbol. 

32.   It wasn’t until 1925 that a string of Christmas lights became affordable for a very American reason: 15 companies that were individually making Christmas lights had a realization that if they all joined together, they could dominate the market. 

33.   Thus, the NOMA Electric Corporation was born, the worlds largest Christmas light manufacturer, and later, famed inventor of the Christmas bubble light. NOMA remained at the top of the Christmas light food chain for about forty years, until after being undercut by cheaper lights made outside of the United States, they decided to get out of the lighting business in factor of safety plugs and wire assembly. 

34.   By then the genie was out of the bottle, and Christmas lights in a wide variety of shapes, colors, and quantities were here to stay! 

35.   To me, even without the Christian traditions that have been so prevalent for Christmas, much of us bringing greenery into the house comes back to “the light always returns”. There will be growth again, even when it seems covered in snow and darkness and bleakness. 

36.   That’s what thousands of years of tradition around this time seems to come back to. It’s one of the reasons we seem drawn to lighting as many things as humanly possible, to contrast this darkest part of the year. It’s a thing I take comfort in: no matter how overwhelming the dark seems, the light always returns. 

37.   And either literally with a display of lights, or metaphorically with some kindness to someone who needs it, checking in on a friend, or just overall being a good person, you can be a part of that as well. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and I’ll talk to you next year. 

38.   Audio mixing for this episode was done by Craig Murdock, who tells me that while hand-wiring a Christmas tree in this day and age is impressive, it probably shouldn’t keep causing the electricity in my building to go out.

39.   If you want to be up to date with all things podcast-related, why not follow us on Instagram at Whatexplaincast and on our Facebook page as What?! Explain. Podcast. 

40.   Don’t forget to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you have some time, please rate and review us! 

41.   This is the second season finale of What?! Explain, so there will be a bit of a break in between episodes. Don’t worry, there will be a season 3, I’m already hard at work on writing and recording the new episodes, which I am very excited about. 

42.   There will be some mini episodes dropped in before the start of season 3, so I’m not leaving you all completely without content! Thank you again for supporting the show, either by listening to it, sharing the episodes on social media, or even just telling other people about it, and I’m hoping to make your faith in the show worth it. I’ll see you next year and next season, and thank you again.