How did the Christmas Tree Trimming Tradition Come to be?
By: Queenie December 19, 1843….. That’s the day Charles Dicken’s short story “A Christmas Carol” was published. According to historian Ronald Hutton: Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centered festival of generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centered observations, the observance of which had dwindled during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The holiday, remade as a family-centered rather than community-centered festival, carried its own set of contradictions: the practice of gift-giving created the possibility of commercialization, and the shift from community to familial focus further eroded the traditions of communal religious observance. June 26, 1870…… That’s the day that President Ulysses S. Grant declared Christmas (December 25) to be a federal holiday. December 22, 1882…… That’s the day that a man named Edward H. Johnson completed the wiring of his Christmas tree with 80 red, white and blue electric incandescent li
